BERLIN, Sven

Sven Berlin
British 1911 - 1999
Born in Sydenham, South-East London, Sven Berlin was a prominent, yet often controversial, figure in the world of 20th C British art. Related to the Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin. Forced by financial circumstances to leave school at the age of twelve, he began adult life as an adagio dancer. In due course, he and his wife Helga moved to Penwith, in Cornwall. He attended adult classes at Exeter University, attending courses and lectures in subjects such as philosophy, the ancient cultures and the arts. Sven Berlin’s artistic skills began to flourish.
He went to Cornwall in 1938 where he met and joined Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Margaret Mellis, Naum Gabo and the potter Bernard Leach - the main protagonisits of the St Ives group, a colony of Modernist artists; they established the movement as being abstract and constructivist where the Cornish landscape played a large part.

Berlin’s beside being a painter, also worked as a book illustrator, biographer, and poet and was associated with the Zennor Moors poets and collaborated with the post-war Crypt Group venture with Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron amongst others.

Encouraged by Augustus John he left Cornwall in 1953 in order to pursue an interest in the gypsies of the New Forest where he settled until the 1970s. He later moved to Dorset with his third wife, where he died in 1999

Etching of two heads by Sven Berlin.