‘It was love at first sight, again’: Prague exhibition celebrates work of pair at heart of Europe’s avant garde

Anne-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung battled with the Nazis and created some of the most riveting abstract art of the last century

T

hey created some of the most riveting abstract art of the 20th century, fought Nazis with the gun and the pen, married, divorced and married again. Now the continent-spanning and nigh-forgotten love story of the Burton-Tayloresque couple at the heart of the European avant garde is finally being given its due at a major art institution.

And We’ll Never Be Parted, exhibiting at Prague’s Kunsthalle gallery, is the first show to reunite the Norwegian painter Anna-Eva Bergman and German-born Hans Hartung.

Consisting of 350 items across two floors, the exhibition features paintings, photographs, tools – and the extraordinary breakup letter that spelled the pair’s separation but allowed them to remarry as creative equals 15 years later.