Franz Bergmann was famous for his boldly painted modernist murals and oil and watercolor paintings.  Born on August 6, 1898 in Vienna, Austria, he was raised with the artistic influence of his father who was a painter as well as a librarian at the University of Vienna.

Bergmann, who early in his career listed his name as Walter Bergman, enrolled in the Vienna National Academy of Art after serving in World War I, and graduated with honors in 1925. He then moved to the United States and lived in New York, Colorado, and Chicago, Illinois, before settling in San Francisco, California, in 1929.  There he worked as a muralist and a painter, having also painted murals in Chicago for the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.

He painted murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939 and he also taught at the California School of Fine Art.  In addition, Bergman was known to have authored and illustrated books for juveniles including This Way to the Circus (1938) and San Francisco Flips (1946).

He was a member of the San Francisco Art Association and the San Francisco Art Center. Bergman exhibited locally in San Francisco and in other parts of the nation.  In 1926 he showed his work at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Architectural League in New York City in 1927, and the Santa Fe Art Museum in 1936. In San Francisco he exhibited with the San Francisco Art Association between 1929 and 1936.

Bergmann died in January of 1977 in Daly City, California.

Sources:
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940
Peter Hastings Falk (Editor), Who Was Who in American Art