Sven BERLIN (1911-1999) 'Incomplete Everest Text & Drawings ...

Hammer

£80

Sven BERLIN (1911-1999) 'Incomplete Everest Text & Drawings Without Typescript of Poem - Also Carbon Copy TS' and 'Everest Handwritten Text & Drawings Incomplete' Two folders including typescript, various photocopied pages, handwritten text and some original drawings relating to 'Everest'. Also included within one of the two folders is a collection of Berlin's poems named 'Six Great Men As Artists', signed and dated 1997. Artists mentioned include Picasso, Dante, Homer, Michaelangelo, and Van Gogh. As described in Berlin's 1994 book, 'Coat of Many Colours', the influence for 'Everest' was Berlin's second cousin, scientific explorer Sven Hedin. Berlin states that 'although I never met him, he was a major influence on my early life'. He admired his emblematic spirit and confessed that 'Although I was early to realise I could not become an explorer I was led by Hedin's influence to discover the ancient tombs of the mind which visual images awakened in me and with which their secret chambers are filled. The living Gods and Goddesses who guard them in those ruined cities through which my tiger has led me down the years have taught me to weave them into the fabric of daily life through rare and extraordinary processes of art.' Although Berlin did not climb Mount Everest, Sven Hedin did, and he documented this feat in his 1923 book, 'Mount Everest', which Berlin read as a child. Although Berlin was not a typical 'physical' explorer, influences such as Hedin's inspire exploration of creativity, rather than that of physical place.