Karin Jonzen

Karin Margareta Jonzen, née Löwenadler, (22 December 1914 – 29 January 1998) was a British figure sculptor whose works, in bronze, terracotta and stone, were commissioned by a number of public bodies in Britain and abroad.

Biography Karin Löwenadler was born in London to Swedish parents and attended the Slade School of Art from 1933 to 1936. At the Slade she won prizes in both painting and sculpture and decided to abandon her original ambition to become a cartoonist and concentrate on sculpture. Jonzen continued her studies at the Royal Academy Stockholm and at the City and Guilds Art School in Kennington during 1939. That same year she won the Prix de Rome, but the beginning of World War II prevented her making use of the travelling scholarship it conferred. While recovering Jonzen became convinced that modernism and abstract sculpture was not the way to advance her art and decided to focus on figurative works.

After the war Jonzen's figures and sculptures were bought by some important art collectors, including Robert Sainsbury and Kenneth Clark, although otherwise commercial galleries showed little interest in her work.

Jonzen entered three pieces for the 1968 Sculpture in the City exhibition which was part of that year's City of London Festival. This led to her receiving two commissions from the Corporation of the City of London including her 1972 group Beyond Tomorrow outside the Guildhall. Subjects of her portrait busts include Paul Scofield, Max Von Sydow, Malcolm Muggeridge and Dame Ninette de Valois, as well as Sir Hugh Casson and Sir A. P. Herbert. The National Portrait Gallery in London holds her bronze bust of Learie Constantine, while the Tate collection includes her 1947/1948 terracotta Head of a Youth. Other works by Jonzen are also held by art galleries in Bradford, Glasgow, Brighton, Southend and in Melbourne, Australia.

Jonzen exhibited on a regular basis at the Royal Academy, with the London Group, the New English Art Club and at the Royal Society of British Artists.

Jonzen was married twice, firstly to Basil Jonzen, a well-regarded artist and art collector in his own right, whom she married in 1944 and with whom she ran a successful art gallery for a time. After they divorced she married a former boyfriend, a poet called Ake Sucksdorff who she had first met in 1938.

Public art row image = Bust of Samuel Pepys, Seething Lane, London EC3 - geograph.org.uk - 1077498.jpg subject = Samuel Pepys location = Seething Lane Garden, London coordinates = date = 1983 type = Bust on pedestal notes = Tate Gallery 'The Four Seasons'; Tate Gallery 'Contemporary Religious Art'; City of London Festival 1968; Fieldborne Galleries 29 May to 19 June 1974