The Quotidian World of Helen Berggruen, Berggruen Gallery

Suspension of the Future Tense, 2025
Oil on linen
30 x 40 inches

By Matt Gonzalez

Helen Berggruen's exhibition at Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco presents twenty-five memorable paintings featuring an array of subject matter: interior domestic scenes filled with mundane midcentury furnishings; both urban and country landscapes featuring excavators, tractors, and hay rolls; still lifes with floral arrangements and depictions of assorted picture books; and some figurative paintings offering portrayals of anachronistically clad figures. The paintings range in size from 48 x 64 inches to 24 x 18 inches, and the medium is primarily oil on linen, a smooth surface which facilitates the adhesion of oil paint, allowing better handling and a polished finish. 

Berggruen's subject-matter, particularly her elaborate interior settings, recalls the French Intimist movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, when a young group of painters sought to disrupt what qualified as appropriate themes for serious painting; they relished private and intimate interior scenes of conventionality to convey the emotional ingredient of living. In some respects, it can be said they celebrated the banal. The painters, many who had comprised the predecessor avant-garde group known as Les Nabis, and who included Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Felix Vallotton, later shifted toward disruptions of realism; perspectives were painted irregularly, even skewed. They celebrated the unassuming space of the familiar; such as parlors and living rooms, and garden landscapes, understanding that such attention offered a poetic observance of life. Conveying mood and emotional subtlety was their objective. Berggruen reaffirms these sensibilities. Novelist Andre Gide later coined the group’s moniker; Intimism, derived from the French word for “innermost” (French: intimisme). French art critic Camille Mauclair, whose words could equally apply to Berggruen, described Intimism as “a revelation of the soul through the things painted, the magnetic suggestion of what lies behind them through the description of the outer appearance, the intimate meaning of the spectacles of life.” 

Powerlock, 2025
Oil on linen
30 x 40 inches

Berggruen diverges from the Intimist’s preference for flat perspective and resistance to three-dimensionality. Additionally, they focused on color, and form, and a spatial aesthetic that filled their pictures with elaborate patterns, seemingly bleeding into one another. The resulting dreamlike symbolist quality, nevertheless, portrayed the real. In contrast, Berggruen’s color is more vibrant and her ability to render depth never evaporates, although she does alter object-form. Her seemingly cartoony-style, manages to retain a painterly quality and avoids overly-distorting the picture plane, while emphasizing movement and conveying a sense of vibration. Yet, she joins the Intimist in using exaggerated form, subsuming the viewer into an otherwise unnoticed intimacy, elevating the quotidian. Berggruen doesn’t accomplish this with specific figurative narration, like Vuillard, where a woman sweeps the floor or is captured reading a book. Her work offers an homage to quiet surroundings by depicting the lived space, in all of its mundane glory, typically without character adornment. She makes these ordinary living spaces worthy of contemplation and a runway for reflections on living. The emotional effect is unmistakably urgent, reminding us that mystery can be derived from simplicity; even elementary presences of domesticity.

Pont de La Tournelle, 2025
Oil on linen
37 x 32 inches

Berggruen’s brushwork is also reminiscent of Vincent Van Gogh, particularly the bold, swirling landscape elements apparent in many of her outdoor paintings, where thicker marks help congeal the whole composition due to its uniformity, thus creating a sense of movement. Van Gogh’s strokes captivate the viewer's eye, activating the overall dynamism of the composition. Use of impasto creates a tactile quality and imparts an intensity of emotion. Like Van Gogh's, Berggruen’s swirls and saturated vibrant colors create just enough realism; while she abandons formal accuracy, she still renders the cascading afternoon light to transform ordinary things into an emotional resonant opportunity. Where Van Gogh utilized distorted perspective and naive painterly elements in his 1888 painting “The Bedroom” (depicting his room in the Yellow House in Arles), where he deliberately places a skewed angle along the rear wall, Berggruen does a similar thing in her painting “Pont de La Tournell.” She depicts the arch bridge spanning the river Seine in Paris with slightly awkward curvature and perspective, with many of the lines and angles she uses rendering the brickwork heightening a sense that something is out of focus or amiss. The irony of discussing realism in this instance, is that the Pont de La Tournelle bridge was intentionally constructed lacking symmetry (originally built in 1620), apparently to replicate the river’s flow and the surrounding environment. Whether Berggruen is even aware of this doesn't matter. She redefines the very premise of realism, because representation is sufficiently conveyed, yet there is a pushing aside of verisimilitude. Truth can be rendered inexactly; one senses that she would have painted it this way regardless. The resulting unexpected intensity evokes subtleties that realism cannot reach. This is the magic of Berggruen’s aesthetic; she presses us to feel the painting, not just see it. 

Elkader Co-op, 2005-2025
Oil on linen
24 x 18 inches

There are different ways to read these paintings. Berggruen’s placement of things of personal resonance in many of the pictures allows an interpretation of the works as self-portraiture; even the construction machinery, usually depicted in vacant work sites, suggests things she might have encountered on a walk. There is unpretentiousness in the objects she selects to paint; accordions, pruning shears, inkwells, open picture books, and brushes, can be seen as personal symbols of comfort and relaxation within living spaces. Landscapes peer through the windows of her pictures referencing nature and Berggruen’s desire to be connected to it. These places may be fictitious, nevertheless, they offer a place the artist yearns to be, one she courageously makes for herself and shares with us. Also, the painterly tradition of vanitas or memento mori comes to mind when assessing these paintings. For many centuries, still life tradition celebrated the beauty of living by having the viewer focus on its impermanence. Memento mori became popular as a way for artists to remind the viewer that things would not last forever; the term, translated from Latin as “remember (that you must) die,” was a way to depict the ephemeral nature of life. Berggruen uses outdated or fading technology comparably. Although not painting skulls amidst things she values, Berggruen selects objects that prompt us to reflect on how the world is changing and evolving. For instance, depictions of a rotary phone with a cord attached to a handset; or, a manual typewriter with key levers and rolling cylinder, prompt a reckoning. Even her decision to include construction equipment in some of the city landscapes manifests obsolescence. By directing our gaze to these soon-to-be antiquated items, we reflect on the passage of time, our narrowing future, and thus our mortality.

Paris Cement Mixers, 2025
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 inches

An associated theme in Berggruen’s work is how technology makes us less human. Berggruen is imparting that our lives are precious. She implores us to stop and look, to feel. Berggruen’s paintings similarly invite contemplation about leisure and work. They make us long to be in a restful place, to seek a respite from daily chaos. Yet for most of us, ever-emerging technology has stripped us of the ability to pause. Today, our phones follow us everywhere and we are available 24/7. In his seminal 1880 essay critiquing the labor movement’s struggle to expand wage labor, “The Right to Be Lazy,” French socialist Paul Lefargue argued that the eight-hour workday was still servitude; what we should secure was the right to be lazy, meaning, the ability to have leisure. The qualities of relaxation, joy, and self-realization are  threatened by the mechanical age; we cannot truly be human surrounded by advanced technology. Berggruen would no doubt agree.

Pont au Change, 1995-2025
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches

Berggruen is an artist with a studied and careful gaze. She has come to know the forms which surround her; the curvature of an armchair, and the fabric folds of long drapery, and even the elegant shape of a tractor. She is a lover of things, teaching us that beauty can be found everywhere. Her focus is intense and in service to a larger message: Berggruen is telling us to relish the colors we see and the air we breathe, and not forget to live. 

Helen Berggruen’s untitled solo exhibition is her second at Berggruen Gallery and will be on view until August 14th. She has previously exhibited with George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco; the Fischback Gallery, in New York City; Villa Francke, Potsdam, Germany; I. Wolk Gallery, St. Helena, California, and numerous other venues.