John Swarbrooke Fine Art presented an exhibition in the winter of 2022 dedicated to the animal drawings of 20th-century pioneer Sven Berlin.
Characterised by the artist’s playful style, these drawings reflect Sven’s love of animals, from a boxer terrier to a stag’s head, from a swallow in flight to a leaping hare. They range in date from his formative time in Cornwall to exile to the New Forest and his later move to the Isle of Wight, revealing the development of Sven’s distinctive graphic style.
To view the exhibition catalogue please follow this link.
Two geese
ink on paper
39 x 55 cm. (framed: 57 x 73 cm.)
Two stags
signed and dated lower left Sven 67
ink on paper
30 x 40 cm. (framed: 46 x 56 cm.)
Crow triptych
ink on paper
each 15 x 8 cm. (framed: 28 x 42 cm.)
Okkie sleeping I
pencil on paper
20 x 24 cm. (framed: 36 x 40 cm.)
Okkie sleeping II
titled and dated upper right
pencil on paper
20 x 24 cm. (framed: 36 x 40 cm.)
Swallow in flight
ink on paper
50 x 35 cm. (framed: 53 x 76 cm.)
“The voice within me was the voice of the sea-bird wheeling in the night”
Geese heads
ink on paper
24 x 24 cm. (framed: 40 x 40 cm.)
Trehane bull, study for bronze
signed, titled and dated lower right Trehane Bull (for bronze) / Sven Berlin 1967
ink on paper
31 x 50 cm. (framed: 51 x 68 cm.)
Woman holding fish
pencil on paper
48 x 32 cm. (framed: 67 x 51 cm.)
“Fishing is a kind of meditation”
Donkey
ink on paper with blue crayon annotations
27 x 36 cm. (framed: 50 x 58 cm.)
Cow
signed and dated lower right in pencil Sven Berlin 67
ink on paper
33 x 48 cm. (framed: 51 x 67 cm.)
A long day
pencil on paper
22 x 13 cm. (unframed)
Berlin in Stonard Wood in the New Forest, with boxers Arabella and Hibok
Boxer
pencil on paper
21 x 32 cm. (framed: 37 x 49 cm.)
Donkey head
signed and dated lower right Sven 82 in pencil
ink on paper
48 x 57 cm. (unframed)
Three cat studies
ink on paper
24 x 19 cm. (framed: 41 x 35 cm.)
Horse
signed and dated lower left S. 50
pencil on paper
28 x 38 cm. (unframed)
Swan
ink on paper
42 x 58 cm. (framed: 60 x 77 cm.)
Biography
Painter, draughtsman, sculptor, writer, Sven Berlin was born in London, his name deriving from Swedish ancestry. After a successful career as an adagio dancer in the 1930s, where he met first wife Helga, he dedicated himself to his first love: painting. In 1938 he moved to Cornwall and the growing art community of St Ives which included Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Naum Gabo. Sven became a co-founder of the influential Crypt Group in 1946 and a founder-member of the Penwith Society in 1949.
Sven developed a reputation as a charismatic painter and sculptor in his Tower studio at Porthgwidden Beach. Yet in 1953, with bitter infighting between artists and an eviction from his studio, Sven left the art colony with his second wife Juanita for the New Forest in a horse-drawn wagon. Sven continued painting and writing (a total of ten books), as well as pursuing his love of animals by keeping a zoo. However the publication of The Dark Monarch in 1962, a roman à clef which painted an unsavoury picture of the St Ives art colony and its thinly disguised members, caused great controversy. Berlin and his third wife Julia moved to the Isle of Wight in 1970 after a series of lawsuits relating to The Dark Monarch and he would not return to the mainland (to Wimborne in Dorset) until 1975.
Opposite: Sven Berlin working, 1962
Self-portrait
ink on paper
8 x 8 cm. (framed: 21 x 21 cm.)