Berenice Sydney

Berenice Sydney in front of one of her paintings, London, 1972.

Berenice Sydney (1944–1983), born Berenice Frieze, professionally known as 'Berenice', was a prolific English artist who produced a substantial body of work from 1964 until her death in 1983. Her oeuvre consists of paintings on canvas and paper, drawings, prints, children's books, costume design and performance. A memorial exhibition of her work was held at the Royal Academy in 1984 followed by solo shows in Italy, Abu Dhabi, the Gulf of Bahrain, Switzerland and Britain. Her work continues to be featured in print and watercolour shows held in Burlington House. Her work is in over 100 private and public collections.[1]

Biography

Wedding photo of Berenice and Romano Cagnoni at her family home in 1966
The grave of Berenice Sydney, Highgate Cemetery, London

Berenice Sydney was born in Esher, Surrey in 1944 and educated from the age of six at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London. From her early years, she studied ballet with Marie Rambert and classical guitar with Adele Kramer. As an adult she balanced a rigorous work schedule in her studio by training at the Dance Centre in Covent Garden and attending flamenco dance studios in Hampstead and New York City. Berenice was married to the Italian photographer Romano Cagnoni from 1970 until they divorced in February 1983. They lived in Highgate.

In addition to reading the classics and studying mythology she was fluent in five languages. She was enrolled at the Central School of Art and Design, but left formal art education to set up a studio in Chelsea.[2]

She participated in over 40 exhibitions before her death of an asthma attack at the age of 37. She is buried in the eastern section of Highgate Cemetery, just off the main western path, at its northern end. Her father, the documentary filmmaker Joseph Sydney Frieze, died a few months later and is buried with her. Lord McAlpine gave the eulogy at her funeral which was also attended by Dr. David Brown then the Assistant Keeper in Modern Collections at the Tate Gallery.

Career

Berenice Sydney was included in ten group exhibitions between 1963 and 1975 and held eleven solo shows, in addition to being invited to represent Britain at the Biennale della Grafica d'Arte in Florence in 1974. The following year she showed her "stained glass effect" canvases at the McAlpine Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum.

Her first professional exhibition was held at the Drian Galleries in 1968 and included Susanna and the Elders with Charlie the Pigeon, Coffee Pot and 3 Yellow Flowers and The Drummer Boy.[3]

She began to exhibit her works on paper including Dancing Nymphs, Hermaphroditus, Pan and Two Nymphs, The Marriage of Psyche and Eros, Naiads Surprised by Satyrs, in 1968. Linocuts were also exhibited that year and included Aphrodite and Ares, Nymphs Dancing, Psyche and Eros, Nude Fiddling with Toe, Pan and Two Nymphs and Hebe and Artemis. She continued to explore themes relating to Persian mythology, Christian symbolism and Greek mythological subjects as well as referencing Ancient Egyptian art, creating a hieroglyph of her professional name and working on papyrus.

Responding to the exhibition 'Salute to Berenice Sydney' held at the Royal Academy Max Wykes-Joyce wrote:[3]

In the Spring of 1968 I was much charmed by a first one-person show at the Drian Galleries of large, lively paintings which evidenced the artist's interest in dance and music, and a group of black and white drawings on mythological themesm [sic?] made in her late teens and very early twenties by the young self-taught Berenice Sydney. I praised them greatly: subesequently [sic?] show of her work were in turn singled out for admiration in Arts Review by Marina Vaizey, Pat Gilmour, Oswell Baakeston and Charles Bone. And these praises were more recently joined by those of Kenneth Garlick of the Ashmolean Museum and David Brown of the Tate Gallery. Her painting evolved from figuration to an apparent abstraction which was, in truth, a dance of colours, an expression of natural exuberance. She was continually researching new means of printmaking and mixed media works, each kind of which is represented in this, her memorial exhibition.

Painting

Sydney's work developed from representational to semi-abstract and she soon established her style in purest abstract form starting with tiny delicate Persian Garden designs, miniatures in naturalistic colours that become abstract etchings: Bakhtiari, The Sultan's Garden, Shirvan Kabistan II, Hachly Moons, Little Squares, Saruk, which were exhibited in 1969.

From 1973 her oils on canvas also began to develop into conceptual abstractions. From discernible figures worked in flowing brush strokes her forms became multi-faceted describing movement in hundreds of colour mutations and shapes. Sydney's later paintings were developed in series, based on specific organic forms, such as leaves (see illustration), that provided a dynamic structural frame for the buildup of paint across large canvasses. Colour combined with vortex-like compositions, starting from a central point to expand outwards, enabled the artist to explore the kinesthetic qualities of visual experience in a way that relates to Bridget Riley's later work.

Printmaking

Sydney continued to experiment in oils and other media and produced etching, engravings in steel (Art in Steel exhibition 1972), copper and perspex monoprints. One of her influences was Stanley William Hayter and her etchings would then use multiple colours on a single plate. She also produced aquatints and lithographs using one plate for each colour process. Her work in serigraphy was also extensive and first exhibited in 1974.

Drawing

Sydney's drawing consistently used acrylic and oil pastels, ink and brush creating a series of works on Gemini paper. She produced a series of intensely detailed pen drawings merging the calligraphic with the figurative in a humorous way, as in Pen drawing with Jester, 1976.[4]

Children's Books

Sydney wrote and illustrated a Book of Nonsense Verse 1982/3 later titled Book of Fools which she dedicated to the First of April. A page from this work featuring the poem The Ant who Danced and Pranced is featured in the catalogue to the exhibition Homage to Berenice Sydney. In it the art historian, Florian Rodari's appraisal of Sydney's work appears in French with a translation in English by Charlotte Frieze.[4] The black and white illustrations to the Book of Fools are aquatints etched in a delicately delineated style. The text is written in French and English. Four artist's proofs of the book subsequently titled Book of Fools were printed. The French version of A Book of Fools was purchased by the Bibliothèque Nationale Paris in October 1982 in addition to a number of the artist's earliest etchings, now kept in the Cabinet des Estampes. An audiocassette recording of the artist giving a reading of the Book of Fools was made at the Musée d'Elysée in Lausanne as the artist performed with castanets, accompanied by Gypsy Flamenco musicians and rendered in parts with a Yorkshire accent in homage to her father's family origins.

Exhibitions

Exhibitions during her lifetime 1968–1982

1968

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1982

Posthumous Exhibitions 1984 onwards

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

Represented by Lumley Cazalet

including Henri Michaux, Brice Marden, Ben Nicholson, Jean Fautrier 1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1998

2002

2006

2008

2010

Public collections

Museums and Galleries

Public and University Collections

Corporate and Commercial Collections

Private Collections

References

  1. ↑ The papers of Berenice Sydney (TGA 200711), Tate Archive, The Archive of British Art since 1900, London
  2. ↑ Buckman, David Artists in Britain Since 1945 (Art Dictionaries Ltd; Enl Upd edition: October 2006) ISBN 0-9532609-5-X ISBN 978-0-9532609-5-9
  3. 1 2 Max Wykes-Joyce, "Berenice Sydney", 'Arts Review', March 1984
  4. 1 2 Florian Rodari Homage to Berenice Sydney, Edwin Engelberts, Galerie Art Contemporain, Geneva 1985
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