Ciel Bergman, a Berkeley High School yell leader who once modeled for a Norman Rockwell painting, then later became an acclaimed postmodern landscape painter in Santa Barbara and Santa Fe, has died at 78.
Ms. Bergman, born Cheryl Maria Olsen, died last Sunday in a Pleasanton care center. The cause of death was lung cancer, said her daughter, Bridgit Koller.
“She could move paint across a canvas like nobody else,” said Ron Stevenson of R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla (San Diego County). The gallery had represented Ms. Bergman since a show called “The Last Sunset of the 20th Century,” for which she made a painting of nearly every Santa Fe sunset of 1999.
Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Oakland Museum of California, among others.
“She was a painter of unique abstractions deeply felt and masterfully executed. A human response to the world of nature,” said Peter Selz, professor emeritus for the History of Art department at UC Berkeley. “The adjective ‘beautiful,’ abhorred by most contemporary critics, identifies her work.”
Once a registered nurse who worked in a hospital psychiatric ward, Ms. Bergman was a struggling single mom of two when she couldn’t resist the pull of her art. In 1969, she entered a painting in the Jack London Invitational, an art contest in Oakland, and won first prize. This compelled her to enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned her master of fine arts with honors in painting.
Upon graduation, she became a lecturer in painting and drawing at both UC Berkeley and California State University Hayward (now Cal State East Bay). In 1975, she got a SECA Award in painting from SFMOMA and was also featured in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition of contemporary American art hosted every two years at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
As Ms. Bergman was gaining acclaim for her art she was hired, in 1976, for a full-time faculty position at UC Santa Barbara, where she taught for 18 years.
In 1982, she was included in the group show “Fresh Paint — 15 California Painters” at SFMOMA.
Her most notorious show was called “Sea of Clouds What Can I Do.” Ms. Bergman had been appalled by all the litter on the beach, so she and her students went out and collected enough trash to fill seven garbage bins and installed it at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum.
“She felt like we were killing the planet with all this trash,” Koller said. “That was the show that transitioned her into a stronger focus on the environment in her work.”
On her 50th birthday, Ms. Bergman legally changed her name to Ciel (pronounced C.L.) Bergman to honor her maternal grandmother from Sweden.
While on the faculty at UCSB, Ms. Bergman traveled to China, where she had an epiphany to only make paintings of beauty from that point on.
She had once visited New Mexico, to meet her hero, artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Ms. Bergman fell in love with the raw landscape and eventually gave up her tenured position at UCSB and bought 280 acres of high desert in the New Mexico wilderness.
She later moved to Santa Fe, where she was to remain until she became ill last year.
“She was a very generous and loving person, a great friend and supportive of all artists, which is very refreshing,” said Stevenson. “Artists are usually about ‘me, me, me.’”
Ms. Bergman spent most of her childhood in North Berkeley, where she attended Thousand Oaks Elementary and Garfield Junior High School. In 1956, she graduated from Berkeley High School where she was head varsity yell leader, which led to a brief stint as an art studio model.
While on a trip through New England with her mother, Evelyn Givant, they had a chance encounter with Rockwell. Givant bragged that her daughter had been a cheerleader and soon enough, Ms. Bergman was posing in his studio in Stockbridge, Mass.
She forgot all about it until she appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Nov. 23, 1961. Ms. Bergman never framed the cover, never talked about it, and never used it to advance her position as an artist.
“She was warm and enthusiastic about her surroundings, about beauty, about nature,” said her sister, Janice Leiser of Piedmont. “She painted things with great poignancy, and she loved life.”
Ms. Bergman remained vibrant and active until May, when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Her final show was a pop-up exhibition at her Santa Fe studio in July. Her final drawings, a series of a dozen anatomical hearts, were completed in August. She has a show opening in Southern California in February, which will go on as planned.
“I have strived to create work that is sensuous, luminous, alive with emotional heat, honest and transcendental,” Ms. Bergman stated on her website, www.cielbergman.com. “To pulse with heart, psyche and soul.”
Ms. Bergman’s marriage to Lynn Bowers, her high school sweetheart, ended in divorce in the 1960s. She never remarried.
She is survived by her partner, Dr. Edward Okun of Santa Fe; a sister, Janice Leiser of Piedmont; daughter, Bridgit Koller of Pleasanton; son, Erik Bowers of Northridge (Los Angeles County); and five grandchildren. Services are pending.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF Instagram: @sfchronicle_art
Ms. Bergman, born Cheryl Maria Olsen, died last Sunday in a Pleasanton care center. The cause of death was lung cancer, said her daughter, Bridgit Koller.
“She could move paint across a canvas like nobody else,” said Ron Stevenson of R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla (San Diego County). The gallery had represented Ms. Bergman since a show called “The Last Sunset of the 20th Century,” for which she made a painting of nearly every Santa Fe sunset of 1999.
Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Oakland Museum of California, among others.
“She was a painter of unique abstractions deeply felt and masterfully executed. A human response to the world of nature,” said Peter Selz, professor emeritus for the History of Art department at UC Berkeley. “The adjective ‘beautiful,’ abhorred by most contemporary critics, identifies her work.”
Once a registered nurse who worked in a hospital psychiatric ward, Ms. Bergman was a struggling single mom of two when she couldn’t resist the pull of her art. In 1969, she entered a painting in the Jack London Invitational, an art contest in Oakland, and won first prize. This compelled her to enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she earned her master of fine arts with honors in painting.
Upon graduation, she became a lecturer in painting and drawing at both UC Berkeley and California State University Hayward (now Cal State East Bay). In 1975, she got a SECA Award in painting from SFMOMA and was also featured in the 1975 Whitney Biennial, an exhibition of contemporary American art hosted every two years at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
As Ms. Bergman was gaining acclaim for her art she was hired, in 1976, for a full-time faculty position at UC Santa Barbara, where she taught for 18 years.
In 1982, she was included in the group show “Fresh Paint — 15 California Painters” at SFMOMA.
Her most notorious show was called “Sea of Clouds What Can I Do.” Ms. Bergman had been appalled by all the litter on the beach, so she and her students went out and collected enough trash to fill seven garbage bins and installed it at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum.
“She felt like we were killing the planet with all this trash,” Koller said. “That was the show that transitioned her into a stronger focus on the environment in her work.”
On her 50th birthday, Ms. Bergman legally changed her name to Ciel (pronounced C.L.) Bergman to honor her maternal grandmother from Sweden.
While on the faculty at UCSB, Ms. Bergman traveled to China, where she had an epiphany to only make paintings of beauty from that point on.
She had once visited New Mexico, to meet her hero, artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Ms. Bergman fell in love with the raw landscape and eventually gave up her tenured position at UCSB and bought 280 acres of high desert in the New Mexico wilderness.
She later moved to Santa Fe, where she was to remain until she became ill last year.
“She was a very generous and loving person, a great friend and supportive of all artists, which is very refreshing,” said Stevenson. “Artists are usually about ‘me, me, me.’”
Ms. Bergman spent most of her childhood in North Berkeley, where she attended Thousand Oaks Elementary and Garfield Junior High School. In 1956, she graduated from Berkeley High School where she was head varsity yell leader, which led to a brief stint as an art studio model.
While on a trip through New England with her mother, Evelyn Givant, they had a chance encounter with Rockwell. Givant bragged that her daughter had been a cheerleader and soon enough, Ms. Bergman was posing in his studio in Stockbridge, Mass.
She forgot all about it until she appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on Nov. 23, 1961. Ms. Bergman never framed the cover, never talked about it, and never used it to advance her position as an artist.
“She was warm and enthusiastic about her surroundings, about beauty, about nature,” said her sister, Janice Leiser of Piedmont. “She painted things with great poignancy, and she loved life.”
Ms. Bergman remained vibrant and active until May, when she was diagnosed with cancer.
Her final show was a pop-up exhibition at her Santa Fe studio in July. Her final drawings, a series of a dozen anatomical hearts, were completed in August. She has a show opening in Southern California in February, which will go on as planned.
“I have strived to create work that is sensuous, luminous, alive with emotional heat, honest and transcendental,” Ms. Bergman stated on her website, www.cielbergman.com. “To pulse with heart, psyche and soul.”
Ms. Bergman’s marriage to Lynn Bowers, her high school sweetheart, ended in divorce in the 1960s. She never remarried.
She is survived by her partner, Dr. Edward Okun of Santa Fe; a sister, Janice Leiser of Piedmont; daughter, Bridgit Koller of Pleasanton; son, Erik Bowers of Northridge (Los Angeles County); and five grandchildren. Services are pending.
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF Instagram: @sfchronicle_art
Resource:http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Ciel-Bergman-Berkeley-born-painter-and-art-10873299.php
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