painter, was born in Vienna in 1920, he and his family had lived in Warsaw until forced to flee in 1937 because of the Nazis. He worked in Melbourne 1937-48, where he was an active member of the Contemporary Art Society – and a communist – along with his friends Noel Counihan and Vic O’Connor . They painted the life they saw on Melbourne streets. He first exhibited with Boyd and Counihan at the University of Melbourne in 1939. Bernard Smith wrote in 1943 that Bergner, Boyd and Perceval constituted 'the most vital movement in Australian art today’. Some of Bergner’s paintings were the first to address the specific plight of Aboriginal Australians, according to Mellick. 'He recalled: “I did not know what an Aborigine was. He did not look like a Negro, more like a Jew… I painted these people with the faraway look in their eyes from generations before. They were displaced and I felt I identified with them.’ Works included Two Women 1942 (NGV) – one an Aboriginal.

One of the first things Bergner did in Melbourne was to set up a Yiddish theatre. His father Melech Ravitch was a Yiddish poet who had translated Kafka from German into Yiddish in the year of Kafka’s death (1924), but Bergner’s first strong engagement with Kafka was in Melbourne, as he later recalled (quoted Rubin and Mellick). Paintings after he moved to Israel permanently in 1948 continue to take themes from Kafka’s novels and short story 'Metamorphosis’, e.g. The Metamorphosis 1975 (artist’s collection). Retrospective exhibition, Israel, in 2000.

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Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011