In Antibes, the friendship between the Hartung-Bergman couple and Terry Haass told

It’s a beautiful story, made up of romantic encounters and friendship, as only life knows how to write. How ? Miracle of love at first sight. First two protagonists: Hans Hartung (1904–1989) and Anna-Eva Bergman (1909–1987), a German born in Leipzig and a Norwegian from Stockholm, who caught each other’s eyes at a ball in Paris in 1929. Three months later, followed the marriage, then a big trip to Menorca in 1933. Five years after this honeymoon, the lovers divorced.

Everyone remarries, traces their own path. Until paths cross again… Love at first sight again and remarriage in 1957. In the 1960s, our two artists decided to settle on the heights ofAntibesin a field of olive trees where their workshop is nestled… It was another favorite.

A house-workshop with modern architecture

Today, this house-workshop dream, whose modern architecture was designed by the owners of the place, can be visited freely. For two years now, the Hartung-Bergman Foundation reveals the work of the artists who lived here happily (but had no children) until death separated them at the end of the 1980s. The highlight of the tour lies in Hartung’s workshopwhich you absolutely must see: a total abstract work remaining in its own juice, with its brooms, its branches as paintbrushes, and its walls stained with colors that the master projected onto the canvas using a sulphate machine.

Throughout the summer, under the leadership of its director Thomas Schlesser, (also successful author of the novel Mona’s Eyes), the foundation also opens a new door into the intimacy of the Hartung-Bergman couple by inviting their friend Terry Haass.

The abundant dialogue of three artists

Because Terry Haass allows us to consider “sharing the sensitive”, to use the title of the exhibition borrowed from the philosopher Jacques Rancière. Like Hartung, Terry Haass, born Thérésa Goldman in 1923 in Czechoslovakia, suffered as a Jew the tragedies of the 20th^e century: his father was assassinated by the Nazis. Like Bergman, met in 1951 in Norway, the artist who worked as an archaeologist suffered from the loneliness of being a woman among men.

When Anna-Eva died, Terry Haass was one of the few pay tribute in collages, erecting a monument to him at the Henie-Onstad Art Center in Høvikodden near Oslo. Several photographs, extracts from catalogs and letters bear witness to the affinities of the trio.

From a technical point of view, or in the choice of patterns, everyone is inspired. From assertive gestures to sharpened scratchings with branches, the prints of Hartung and Haass seem to merge. In a first room, Bergman makes the metal sheets glow, before letting Haass’s fragmented landscapes emerge in the light. It’s a abundant friendly exchange which is given to us as a share.