Astri Bergman-Taube

Her education began at Tekniska skolan in Stockholm, where she studied applied design, before she moved on to sculptor Sigrid Blomberg's school and then to Konstakademien, where Carl Milles taught her directly. In 1920 she went to Paris, studying at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi, and it was there she met Evert Taube. They married in 1925, the same year they held a joint exhibition at Galleri Gummeson in Stockholm. The marriage placed her within one of Sweden's most vivid cultural partnerships, though her own career ran entirely on its own terms.

She worked across sculpture, watercolor, printmaking, and applied arts throughout her life, never settling into a single medium. Her bronze and pewter objects -- lamps, candlesticks, vases, writing desks, urns -- were produced through her father's foundry and sold through his firm. These pieces carried the same sense of volume and surface she brought to her figurative work. Her approach to applied objects was not decorative in any superficial sense; the forms are weighted and considered, with the same attention she gave to portrait busts.

Portrait sculpture was where she built her strongest reputation. She worked with children as subjects throughout her career, often using her own as models, and she had what one contemporary described as a virtuoso skill in rendering the particular weight and softness of childhood. She also made numerous portraits of Evert Taube and of figures from Swedish cultural life. Her portrait bust of actor Ulf Palme entered the Swedish state's national portrait collection at Gripsholm Castle. Works are also held in the Royal Coin Cabinet in Stockholm and the Kongelige Mønt- og Medaillesamling in Copenhagen.

For public commissions she worked in a broader register. In 1928 she designed the decorative scheme for the interior of the Rio cinema on Hornsgatan in Stockholm -- now the Folkoperan -- where she created dogs, birds, fish, and flowers in white stucco across the building's deep blue ceiling. In 1978, close to the end of her career, she designed the Lisebergsapplåden: a bronze sculpture of two hands in applause that became the trophy awarded annually by the Liseberg amusement park in Gothenburg to individuals who have contributed to Swedish wellbeing. The form is simple and direct, a fitting object for a sculptor who spent decades studying the expressiveness of the human body at small scale.

A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Röhsska Museum in Gothenburg in 2006, opened by Queen Silvia, bringing together sculpture, portraits, applied objects, and watercolors from across her long practice. Astri Bergman-Taube died in Stockholm on 23 December 1980.

On the auction market her work appears regularly, with sculpture dominating the results. The bronze "Ulrika 3 år" has achieved 6,000 SEK and "Flika" 4,800 SEK, while the Lisebergsapplåden sculpture has sold for 3,800 EUR. Most of her auction appearances are at Swedish regional houses, particularly Thelin & Johansson and Stadsauktion Sundsvall, reflecting a collector base that remains largely domestic.