Christian Berg (1893-1976) Sweden
Christian Berg studied at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm from 1915 to 1919, where he created realistic paintings with a focus on the wilderness. Berg was strongly influenced by his travels through Egypt and Greece in the 1920s, where he became acquainted with modern art and the ancient Egyptian sculptures. He also traveled to Paris, where he developed close ties to the artistic community surrounding Fernand Léger.
Berg transitioned from his earlier post-cubist painting to become a sculptor where the classical influence is apparent in his torso sculptures, which he created in various formats and materials from 1926 onwards.
Berg participated at the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, where his largest work based on the theme Monumental Sculpture, and perhaps also his most austere in terms of shape, could be viewed. The sculptor considered to have had the greatest influence on Berg was Alexander Archipenko, though Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti also seem to have provided significant inspiration.
Profile
Mr. Berg holds a Master of Arts in Theory and Composition from Montclair State University, NJ and a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance from Manhattan School of Music in New York.
He has enjoyed an active career in jazz for four decades as a performer in clubs, concerts, festivals, films, radio, and television with such leading musicians as Susanna McKorkle, Mel Lewis, Jimmy Knepper, Joe Albany, Chuck Wayne, Bob Wilber, Marty Grosz, Mulgrew Miller, Fred Hersh, Warren Vache, the Widespread Depression Orchestra, John Pizzarelli, and more. Since 2005 he has been the bassist with the prestigious Columbus Jazz Orchestra and has performed with them in Denmark, Germany, and all over the US as well as in their regular concert series at the Southern Theatre in Columbus, Ohio.
He appears on dozens of commercial recordings with such performers as the Dells, Marty Grosz, Tim Cummiskey, the CCM Faculty Jazztet, Vivian Lord, Dick Mackie, the Columbus Jazz Orchestra, Dave Greer's Classic Jazz Stompers, and many others. His CDs of original compositions, A Man is a Tree and Sweet Sorrow, both on Hipgnosis Records, have received much critical acclaim.
He is very active as a composer/arranger and his songs, jazz compositions, orchestral and chamber pieces and big band arrangements have been performed and recorded by many artists, locally and nationally. He also has composed music for film & television, musical theatre and video games.
As the former Director of Research and Music Development with Brain Actuated Technologies, Inc., Yellow Springs, OH, he developed and patented software for brain-actuated music. He is the inventor of the Berg Bass-in-a-Box, a collapsible semi-acoustic bass.
He is an adjunct professor at Central State University, professor of jazz bass at Otterbein University, professor of jazz bass, modern guitar and arranging at the University of Dayton and a teacher/performer in numerous clinics and workshops throughout the Midwest.
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Born in 1893, in Förslöv, Sweden.
Studies fine arts in Stockholm, where he took an interest in animal painting, in the spirit of Bruno Liljefors. In 1925 Berg moved to Paris to study at André L’hote, here he discovered cubism. A year later Christian made his first sculpture, and in 1927 he makes a short visit with Fernand Léger at Académie Moderne. The Torso theme takes shape.
Christian moves back to Sweden in 1930. Focusing on sculpture, and in 1954 he takes up painting again. In the Sixties, many big scale sculptures are made in Greece. 1973 Berg exhibits together with Edvard Munch at North Jyllands art museum.
The 27th of November in 1976 Christian Berg dies.