Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 4

Sax Berlin
Motherhood: Contemporary Surrealist Oil Painting by Sax Berlin

2012

$16,000
£12,149.18
€13,893.49
CA$22,354.32
A$24,862.88
CHF 12,982.63
MX$302,554.85
NOK 165,807.94
SEK 155,498.59
DKK 103,692.47
Shipping
Retrieving quote...
The 1stDibs Promise:
Authenticity Guarantee,
Money-Back Guarantee,
24-Hour Cancellation

About the Item

Motherhood is a self portrait of Sax Berlin’s experience as a single father. He had to be mother and father at a time when he was aggrieved after his beautiful wife Susan’s passing when no amount of nourishment could fill the need. Symbolised as breasts and pacifiers that the hands cannot grasp. Creating the Surrealist style was the only way to portray this amount of anguish. The child’s anguish being expressed by the tongue wrapped around the head and the tonsils exposed. The mother’s anguish augmented with a cross section of the face and the large wailing tongue going back into the structure of the head. The red undergarment depicting the flaming furnace of emotion beneath the cool of her dress. The design came from my experiments with automatic drawing, the means of accessing the subconscious directly. This piece is a portal of fascination. In contrast, closer inspection will reveal the use of the delicate and many layered Medieval technique of cracked tempera which is a discipline Sax has adapted and evolved to suit his expression for over a decade. It is a technique that will delight connoisseurs. All the colours are hand made from original earth and mineral pigments.
  • Creator:
    Sax Berlin (1953, British)
  • Creation Year:
    2012
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 48 in (121.92 cm)Width: 34 in (86.36 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Brecon, GB
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: wsw371stDibs: LU18914057672

More From This Seller

View All
"With Gratitude". Contemporary Figurative Oil Painting
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
This is a poignant piece from Sax Berlin, an almost iconic working of pre-Renaissance religious painting. His woman is classically posed and portrays her emotions perfectly in the ca...
Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Silver

Mother With Child: Contemporary Figurative Oil painting
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
Few artists have mastered the use of pigments in the way that Sax Berlin has and his delicate touch with them imbues this painting with warmth and love. The dark inked lines surround...
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Ink, Oil, Egg Tempera

Cascade. Contemporary Surrealist Oil Painting
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
Once again Berlin gifts us a different aspect of his art. Within Cascade he is able to echo and reference simultaneously several of the Great Masters and also include his own unique ...
Category

2010s Surrealist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Pizzicato:: Contemporary figurative oil painting by Sax Berlin
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
An ephemeral painting by Berlin, a hauntingly beautiful musician with a ghostly violin in her hands. ........"this piece is an amalgam because it takes the cone the cube and the sphe...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Surrealist Evolution. Contemporary Surrealist Oil Painting
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
Acrylic On Canvas
Category

2010s Neo-Expressionist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Acrylic

Dream Of The Inca. Contemporary Abstract Painting
By Sax Berlin
Located in Brecon, Powys
Something of a departure for Berlin, this highly figurative painting use motifs from ancient central American cultures to create a piece that writhes and turns on the canvas. Beautif...
Category

2010s Surrealist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Paper, Acrylic

You May Also Like

The Last Time I Saw It - Surrealist Figurative Painting
By Parris Jaru
Located in New York, NY
Parris Jaru's The Last Time I Saw It is a 16 x 11-inch surrealist oil painting. The primary colors are black and red. The canvas surface has a thick impasto of paint, made with plant-based pigments that Jaru collects during his long exploratory trips through India. The imagery brings a surrealist human figure, with all the body features exaggerated as if in a caricature. NY-born Parris Jaru comes from a Jamaican, Blackfoot Nation, and Arawak Nation background from both his parents. His work is informed by the vivid colors and imagery experienced in his childhood years spent in the coastal town of St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. His exploratory journeys in India enriched his work with a sensibility to natural plant-based pigments that he grinds with oils for his paintings. In his Brooklyn studio, Jaru brings all these cultural inspirations together. His entire body of work is informed by an intentional childlike, faux-naïve style, constantly shifting between figurative and abstraction. Even though at times, Jaru has been working on somber and entirely figure-free paintings, most of his work is defined by poignantly colored and playful surrealistic figures. Jaru often draws his figures with a continuous line emerging from a thick impasto of paint made with powders of Sea Algae, Hibiscus, Gymnema Sylvestre, and Turmeric. Related keywords: Caribbean Artist...
Category

2010s Surrealist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

A Place to Hide - Surrealist Figurative Painting
By Parris Jaru
Located in New York, NY
Parris Jaru's A Place to Hide is a 9 x 12 inches oil painting representing surrealist animals. The primary color is a bright yellow and blue. A glittering paint defines the surface of the canvas. Jaru creates colors from plant-based pigments that Jaru collects during his long exploratory trips through India. The imagery is very playful, presenting surrealist animals drawn with the simplification of forms of some faux-naive art and some graffiti and street artworks. NY-born Parris Jaru comes from a Jamaican, Blackfoot Nation, and Arawak Nation background from both his parents. His work is informed by the vivid colors and imagery experienced in his childhood years spent in the coastal town of St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. His exploratory journeys in India enriched his work with a sensibility to natural plant-based pigments that he grinds with oils for his paintings. In his Brooklyn studio, Jaru brings all these cultural inspirations together. His entire body of work is informed by an intentional childlike, faux-naïve style, constantly shifting between figurative and abstraction. Even though at times, Jaru has been working on somber and entirely figure-free paintings, most of his work is defined by poignantly colored and playful surrealistic figures. Jaru often draws his figures with a continuous line emerging from a thick impasto of paint made with powders of Sea Algae, Hibiscus, Gymnema Sylvestre, and Turmeric. Related keywords: Caribbean Artist...
Category

2010s Abstract Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Figurative Abstract Expressionist Composition in Oil on Canvas
Located in Soquel, CA
Dynamic and expressive Figurative, abstract expressionist composition by California artist "Aska" (20th Century). Colors swirl together in a controlled but chaotic manner. Patches of...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil

Mother, Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Laurent Proneur
Located in Yardley, PA
In her embrace, all life begins, A mother of everything, her love never thins. From galaxies to flowers in bloom, She nurtures the universe, dispelling gloom. In her gentle touch...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Paintings

Materials

Oil

Bacchus, Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Craig Moran
Located in Yardley, PA
This painting started out as a Picasso-esque creature. I wasn't satisfied with it, so I painted around and over parts of the image, and this is the result. :: Painting :: Abstract :...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil

Abstract 16.24, Painting, Oil on Canvas
By Eva Hoffmann
Located in Yardley, PA
In my work, I have created a world of abstraction with oil paints. I have passionately let the emotions flow to create a composition that radiates movement and dynamism. The hues u...
Category

2010s Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Oil