Review: Siri Berg's Kabbalah Paintings
Installation View: Siri Berg: The Kabbalah Paintings from the 1980s, David Richard Gallery, New York, 2023. Artwork Copyright © Siri Berg Estate. Courtesy David Richard Gallery. Photo: Yao Zu Lu.
Siri Berg (1921–2020) was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She immigrated from war-ravaged Europe to the United States at nineteen years old. Her intense interest in color was formalized by studying with Austrian born Zita Querido—a former student and colleague of Hans Hofmann—at the Riverdale Fine Arts Society in New York. Color was a life-long passion, enhanced by Berg’s strong interest in the works and ideas of Johannes Itten and Josef Albers: she in fact taught Color Theory at the Parsons School of Design for more than thirty years.
Not content with manufactured paint, Berg mixed her own pigments, rigorously testing color on paper as well as exploring the potential of differently prepared canvas surfaces. This formal precision was not an end in itself, as we see in Berg’s “Kabbalah Paintings.” Berg stated in October 1984, “I plan to continue my exploration of how abstract painting can illuminate the mystical content and value of the Kabbalah.” She articulates this project perfectly,
I became interested in the figurative presentation of the Ten Sefirot from The Kabbalistic treatise by Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (1522–1570) and was impressed by the simplicity of its form. What struck me was how a simple form could visually represent so complex and intellectually profound a subject matter […] Using color, value and design to express the ascending and descending order from the lowest to the highest - thus equating in visual language the lowest with the darkest and the lightest or the “light” with the lightest […] I was especially attracted to the configuration because in all my work I have used form, not as a design element but as a vehicle for the search for unending intellectual and creative expression. This has permitted me to probe, to stretch, to develop, to evolve without distraction and constraint.”
