10 Facts About Warhol’s Ingrid Bergman

Initiated by Galerie Börjeson, Malmö, the project resulted in a tightly focused portfolio honouring Sweden’s “national sweetheart”. Printed in New York by Rupert Jasen Smith and issued shortly after, the commission underscores how Warhol’s studio system could translate a local cultural tribute into globally legible Pop iconography, transforming Scandinavian subject matter through the Factory’s international reach.

Warhol distilled Bergman’s star image into three prints: The Nun and With Hat cite recognisable film frames, while Herself returns to the studio headshot. Through these three stills, they show how celebrity is built across roles, publicity and memory. By naming each print with matter-of-fact titles, Warhol demonstrates how Pop Art’s devices - repetition, bright colours and sharp contour - help fame circulate.

The Nun is based on a still from The Bells of St. Mary’s. Bergman’s face is framed by the lines of a nun’s wimple, but Warhol undercuts that austerity with bold blocks of saturated colour. Delicate outlines pick out her cheekbones and lips, while the dramatised background sky adds theatrical intensity. These choices turn the religious garments into a contemporary costume, hinting at the iconic blend of sainthood and stardom that appears in Warhol’s late portraits.

With Hat comes from a still from Casablanca (1942). Bergman’s hat brim casts a shadow across her face, while flat, high-contrast colour fields make her eyes and lips stand out against a dark ground. By titling the print simply (and omitting the character name, Ilsa Lund) Warhol shifts attention from role to star, underscoringWarhol’s broader meditation on how mass media manufactures celebrity.

Based on a studio publicity photograph, Herself is the series' quietest plate, departing from the performance of the other images and delivering a thoughtful, contemplative headshot. Warhol overlays coloured shapes and hues with delicate outlines, softening Bergman’s gaze and creating form without traditional shading.

Winner of three Academy Awards and two Emmys, and famed for Casablanca, Bergman embodied international stardom with intellectual grace. Her face—ubiquitous in newspapers, posters and television—already functioned as a global logo. Warhol’s suite recognises that built-in circulation: by appropriating film stills and publicity images into silkscreen, he translates her career into the visual economy he chronicled—where culture, commerce and icon-making converge.

Executed at Rupert Jasen Smith’s workshop, the portfolio followed Warhol’s established production model: photographic source, screen separation, then iterative colourways across an edition. With Hat is known with a corresponding trial proof, revealing the artist’s process of fine-tuning palette and registration to achieve a precise emotional result.

Across all three plates, Bergman never meets the viewer’s eyes. The averted gaze, highlighted by rectangles of bright colour, cultivates reverence and mystery - qualities associated with classic Hollywood publicity. Warhol leverages this distance, using Pop Art devices to suggest a modern image updated for a screen-saturated age.

Beginning in the early 1960s with Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Elvis Presley, Warhol turned celebrity into a modern genre. Ingrid Bergman revisits that theme two decades later with greater restraint: fewer panels and subtler palettes. This series reads as the continuity and evolution of Warhol’s obsession with celebrity culture, a late statement that continues to treat fame as both subject and system.

Completed in 1983, the portfolio arrived as an elegiac tribute (Bergman had died in 1982 of Lymphoma) while also being created close to Warhol's own death (d. 1987). This framing lends the suite a reflective tone, and communicates Warhol’s respect for the actress whilst contributing to the celebrity-icon genre he helped redefine.