Metadata: Papers of Sven Berlin
Collection
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Tate Archive
- Holding institution (official language):
- Tate Archive
- Postal address:
- Tate BritainMillbankLondonUnited KingdomSW1P 4RG
- Web address:
- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive
- Reference number:
- TGA 20066
- Title:
- Papers of Sven Berlin
- Title (official language):
- Papers of Sven Berlin
- Creator/accumulator:
- Berlin, Sven
- Date(s):
- 1945/1999
- Language:
- English
- Extent:
- 2 boxes
- Scope and content:
- This collection comprises letters, postcards, cards, sketches, telegram, press cuttings, copies of draft manuscripts, illustrated manuscripts and exhibition catalogues of Sven Berlin.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Sven Berlin (14 Sep 1911 - 14 Dec 1999). Sculptor, painter, writer, draughtsman, author, printmaker and member of the 'St. Ives School'.Sven Berlin was a prolific painter, sculptor and writer born the second of three children in Sydenham to an English mother and Swedish father. His early education consisted of attending boarding school and Crystal Palce School of Practical Engineering and six weeks at Beckenham School of Art. Whilst there he met his first wife, Phyllis Groom , who adopted the name 'Helga'. Berlin began his career, alongside his wife, as an Adagio dancer, performing in music halls, with acts such as Max Miller and George Formby. The couple married in 1937 and visited St. Ives, which inspired Berlin to become an artist and move to Cornwall, despite having no formal art training. He attended Redrith & Camborne Schools of Art, labouring to pay the fees and became friendly with Terry Frost, Barbara Hepworth, Dr Frank Turk, Patrick Heron, Denis Mitchell, Ben Nicholson, John Wells and Bernard Leach. The couple had two children, Paul (1940) and Greta (1942), who is also an artist.Berlin started the war as a conscientious objector but changed his pacifist stance to join the army in 1942 as a serving forward observer in the Royal Artillery and used his time there to write a biography on the St. Ives primitive painter Alfred Wallis, who had died in 1942. Berlin was discharged from the army in 1945 but used letters written whilst in service to later write the novel 'I am Lazarus' (1961). After the war, Berlin's marriage was in disarray so he moved to the 'Tower Studio', sculpting from the severe granite of the region. He eventually divorced Helga in 1953. Berlin's work appeared in the 1950 Festival of Britain, in which he was awarded second place for sculpture.Sven Berlin soon became known as a colourful and controversial figure among the St. Ives artists in the 1940s and 1950s. He was a founder of the Penwith Society in February 1948 along with Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson but resigned from it, along with Peter Lanyon, over the perceived bias of the Penwith towards Nicholson-sponsored abstraction. Along with John Wells, Bryan Winter and Peter Lanyon he also founded the Crypt Group. In 1953, disillusioned with the abstract formalism of modern St. Ives art with its clashes of egos and encouraged by Augustus John, Berlin left Cornwall for the New Forest in a horse drawn wagon with his new wife, Joy Fisher ('Juanita') with whom he had a son, Jasper (1953). Berlin lived a bohemian life for the next decade, living with the gypsies of the New Forest in atrocious conditions, but which led to one of the most creative periods of his life.Whilst in the New Forest, Berlin published the highly controversial book entitled, 'Dark Monarch', a thinly veiled portrayal of the infighting between the St. Ives artists. The novel was withdrawn and pulped, eight days after being printed by order of the High Cour due to four successful libel cases against it by St. Ives artists. Berlin's finances and reputation suffered greatly, being removed from the Society of Artists as well as London galleries ignoring him.In 1963 Berlin divorced Juanita to marry his third wife, Julia Pamela Lenthall, a distant relative of Alfred Wallis. The couple moved to the Isle of Wight before finally, in 1975, settling in Dorset. Berlin remained working up until the end of his life when in the late 1980s and 1990s his work was having a revival. Sven Berlin eventually died in Dorset in 1999, aged 88.Visually, Berlin's work was bohemian, based on confident bold outlines and flamboyant, expressionistic use of colour and depicted 'folky', mythological and romantic subjects involving harbour life, fishermen, labourers and gypsies. Berlin had a long list of publications including his 'Autosvenographies', 'A Coat of Many Colours' (1994) and 'Virgo in Exile' (1996).
- Access points: persons/families:
- Berlin, Sven
- Subject terms:
- Art
- Correspondence
- Access, restrictions:
- Open
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue.
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
