Modern Art & Design Presents Christian Berg
Bukowskis has been entrusted with the sale of a collection of works by Christian Berg, comprising catalogue numbers 463–468. The sculptures were acquired directly from the artist and have since been passed down by inheritance to the current owner.
The sculptor Christian Berg (1893–1976) was one of Swedish modernism’s most consistent and visionary figures. His artistic life was characterized by constant movement – both geographical and spiritual – with his travels playing a decisive role in the development of his sculptural language.
After studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Berg moved to Paris in the 1920s, at a time when the city was the epicenter of modern art. There he met Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, and Fernand Léger, whose ideas about the purity of form and the spiritual dimension of sculpture had a profound influence on him. From Brancusi, he learned to strip away the superfluous and to let form speak with quiet intensity. In Paris, he also met the Swedish artists Waldemar Lorentzon, Erik Olson, Otto G. Carlsund, and Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, who were studying under Léger at the Académie Moderne.
In 1928, Christian Berg made his debut with an exhibition at Galerie Mots et Images in Paris, together with the other Swedes studying under Léger. A month later, he exhibited again, this time at Galerie Aubier in Paris. The reviews were positive, which encouraged the group to exhibit for a home audience in Sweden. Their first exhibition was organized by the Gothenburg Art Association in October–November 1928.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Berg made several journeys to Greece, Egypt, and Italy, where encounters with ancient and archaic sculpture gave him a deep understanding of proportion, rhythm, and the expressive power of material. In the Mediterranean light, he saw how stone and bronze could embody both timelessness and motion. His travels in North Africa brought him close to the raw elements of nature – wind, light, and heat – influences later reflected in his organic formal language.
A clear example of this is his recurring torso motif, in which the human body is reduced to a rhythmic, almost spiritual volume. In these sculptures, the body is freed from anatomy, and Berg employs the inverted forms of post-Cubism to create contrast. A swelling chest or rounded thigh might be rendered as a hollow space, evoking an imagined volume. The torso thus becomes not a body, but an experience of human form – an abstraction moving between the victory goddesses of antiquity and the reductionism of modernism.
In 1954, Berg visited the seaside resort of Xylokastron on the Peloponnese in Greece for the first time. The pine forest, with its twisted trunks stretching down to the water’s edge, gives the village its distinctive character. Berg sketched in pencil and oil, resulting in a series of independent sculptures completed in 1956–57. In these works, the vitality of nature and the spirituality of humanity meet within a single material. Like the pine trees twisting toward the light, humankind seeks its own existential balance.
When Berg returned to Sweden, he brought these experiences with him and became a central figure in 20th-century Swedish sculpture. His works are characterized by light, clarity, and stillness, where the Nordic sensibility meets the universal.
To the catalogue
The collection will be sold at Modern Art & Design
Catalogue online November 4
Viewing November 12–17, Berzelii Park 1, Stockholm
Live auction November 18–19, Arsenalsgatan 2, Stockholm
Read more about Modern Art & Design
All the Works in the Collection at Modern Art & Design
Requests & condition reports
Tukholma
Louise Wrede
Asiantuntija, nykytaide, Private Sales
+46 (0)739 40 08 19
Tukholma
Andreas Rydén
Varatoimitusjohtaja, Johtava asiantuntija, taide
+46 (0)728 58 71 39
Tukholma
Amanda Wahrgren
Asiantuntija, moderni taite ja grafiikka
+46 (0)702 53 14 89
Tukholma
Lena Rydén
Johtava taideasiantuntija, moderni- ja 1800-luvun taide
+46 (0)707 78 35 71
