In Focus: Siri Berg.

Throwing herself into the unknown seems to be a bit what artist Siri Berg is all about. Berg’s paintings can soon be seen at New York’s Franklin 54 Gallery, New York, exhibition opening on September 30 at 6 p.m. 

  • Swedish-born Siri Berg at her studio in Soho, New York City.

  • She was born in Stockholm to a German father and a Polish mother, but left Sweden when still a teenager, all alone. Throwing herself into the unknown seems to be a bit what artist Siri Berg is all about.

  • Siri Berg has been teaching color theory at Parson's School of Design for more than 25 years. “I like teaching. It’s very satisfying for me to watch a student and the transformation he or she goes through during those 15 weeks, and knowing that I contributed to their change. “

  • “From the time when I was 6 years old, I knew I wanted to become an artist,” says Siri Berg. “When I grew up we lived in Prague and in Brussels, and I studied art, but I suppose I was more interested in the boys there then!”
    Berg’s art is simple yet complex, and very, very sophisticated—a bit like a bento box with beautifully arranged sushi. It’s abstract art at its most organized and elegant, and her sense of color is simply sublime.
    “I was always attracted to abstraction,” Berg says. "For me abstract art offers a challenge that reality doesn’t.”
    But let’s go back to the young Berg for a moment—the one who left a turbulent Sweden in order to come to America. Perhaps she felt a bit stifled at home as an only child, because she does remember being eager to get going.
    “I wanted to grow up,” she says. “I wanted to become my own person.”
    Though her mother didn’t much like the thought of young Siri crossing the ocean, the political situation worked in Berg’s favor. She left Sweden via a ship from Norway to Baltimore—a journey that took 28 days.
    “We played bridge the entire 28 days,” she says.
    In America, a bus took her to Columbus Circle in New York City where an aunt was waiting for her.
    “Thus the adventure was over,” Berg says with a smile. “And six months later my parents joined me in the U.S.”
    In New York, Berg studied fashion and interior design, and her art fell by the wayside. She married twice and had two sons. When she was in her early thirties she began painting on a bridge table in the master bedroom of the apartment she shared with her husband and sons in Riverdale. When one son moved out, his room became her studio.
    “I felt that it was finally my time to work with fine arts. In the early days, I relied on stories in order to work. I was inspired by Yeats, and I did work modeled after Arthur Schnitzler’s play ‘Der Reigen.’ It is a play with 10 episodes, but since I’ve always been attracted to the number 7, I made it into seven visual episodes.”
    Eventually Berg needed a studio of her own. Her stepdaughter told her it was time to leave Riverdale behind and get into the swing of things, and urged her to move into Manhattan.
    “I went searching for a studio,” Berg recalls, “but buying one was quite an undertaking in those days. And I remember thinking ‘what am I doing with the family savings?’ But I got my studio!”
    This Soho studio is where she lives and works to this day. It's an amazing, space sparsely decorated and with stylish furniture, including a couple Mies van der Rohe chairs and an old dalahäst. Berg also began teaching—something she is still doing.
    “I like teaching. It’s very satisfying for me to watch a student and the transformation he or she goes through during those 15 weeks, and knowing that I contributed to their change.“
    Today Siri Berg needs no story in order to work. Maybe New York itself is story enough; it certainly gives her enough energy. After more than 25 years, she still teaches color theory at Parson’s School of Design, and her studio—as immaculately organized and beautiful as her art—is full of projects. Her work can be divided into three main bodies: painting, collages (made with Japanese woodblock printing) and assemblages (made from found industrial objects).
    “What I am doing today has evolved through the years,” she says. “But in the end it’s all about color, and I always have a goal and a method.”
    Don’t miss Siri Berg at “The Easels,” an exhibition at Franklin 54 Gallery, curated by Elisa Pritzker. It opens on September 30 at 6 p.m. and will include a conversation with Berg (6:30-7 p.m.). Works will remain on exhibit through October 2. Siri can also be seen in a group show at the Museum of the Aragonese Castle of Otranto, Italy, called "American Abstract Artists International". Until November 19, she is one of the artists featured in a group show at the Shorecrest Preparatory School Fine Arts Gallery, St. Petersburg, Florida called "Visual play: 5 contemporary painters".
    For more information:
    www.pelhamartcenter.org
    www.thefranklin54gallery.com
    www.siriberg.com