"I've always been fascinated with the figure beautifully rendered and by pattern and decoration.  In my new work, I focus on these two interests: my figure studies are given a context within the designs found in erotic Japanese "Shunga" prints, Persian miniatures and the pattern traditions of Eastern Art: realism and pattern as well as Eastern and Western aesthetics." — Michael Bergt

Michael Bergt has been in deep dialogue with art history over the course of his more than forty-year career. Early on he was mentored by the renowned painter Paul Cadmus. Working across drawing, sculpture, and primarily egg tempera painting, Bergt has engaged art’s long history of grappling with representational and abstract sensibilities. Inspired by early Renaissance classical mythology, and other diverse religious and spiritual imagery, his artwork represents his own play with expression and interpretation of the contemporary human condition. While grounded in these art historical and traditional painting techniques, Bergt also profoundly breaks from these as he creates his own cast of mythic characters with their own poetic inclinations and relationships informed by modern dialogues around pressing topics such as gender and sexuality.

Michael Bergt’s paintings and sculptures have been featured in a multitude of publications, and have won numerous awards both domestically and abroad. Bergt received the BP Portrait Award in 2018 at the prestigious portrait painting competition of the National Portrait Gallery and he is a signature member of The Portrait Society of America. Bergt co-founded the Society of Tempera painters and served as the president for twelve years. Bergt resides in Santa Fe, NM.

Michael Bergt has shown his work nationally and internationally for over thirty years in numerous solo and group museum exhibitions and collections including: 

Fons D’Art del Diari Avui, Barcelona, Spain

Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York

Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington

The Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, New Mexico 

Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

de Young Museum, San Francisco, California

California Palace of the Legion of Honor; San Francisco, California

Belvedere Place, Vienna, Austria

The Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences, Evansville, Indiana

Kalmazoo Institute of Art, Kalamazoo, Michigan