Michael Bergt, 1956 | Magic Realism painter

Michael Bergt was born in a small Nebraska farming community.

At the age of five, he decided he wanted to be an artist. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Denver.

At nineteen, Michael became friends with a group of artists, Beat poets and late-night coffee drinkers in lower downtown Denver.

Dividing his time between college, odd jobs and painting, his fellow artists encouraged him to "just paint". In 1978, Michael spent time in San Francisco, where he painted and eventually met the art dealer John Pence who gave him his first major one-man show in 1980.

Bergt began a correspondence with Paul Cadmus 1904-1999 in 1988. With the support of his mentor, Bergt exhibited with Cadmus at the Midtown Gallery in New York City. That exhibition began a ten-year period of New York City exhibitions for Bergt.

In 1995, Bergt was accepted into the Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Their sculpture garden enabled him to consistently show large-scale sculptures along with his paintings and drawings.

Michael Bergt is currently the President of the Society of Tempera Painters.

He was elected a sculptor member of the National Sculpture Society in 2005.

Bergt’s museum exhibitions include the Evansville Museum of Art and Science, the Kalamazoo Institute of Art and a mid-career exhibition at the Arnot Museum in Elmira, New York.