Berenice Sydney’s (1944-1983) oeuvre spans multiple media, which include painting, printmaking, and costume design. Sydney studied at the Central School of Art and Design in London but soon left to open her own studio. During her short lifetime she took part in many international solo and group exhibitions. Following her premature death in 1983, The Royal Academy organised a memorial show of her production called ‘Salute to Berenice’, followed by solo shows in Italy, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Switzerland, and the UK. Her artworks are included in over a hundred important private and public collections around the world, including Tate (London), the British Museum (London), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the Bibliotèque Nationale (Paris), the Bibliothèque Royale (Brussels), the Galleria D’Arte Moderna (Bologna), the Uffizi Gallery (Florence), the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.), the Museum of Modern Art (Buenos Aires), the Philadelphia Museum, the Brooklyn Museum (New York), and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).

‘Untitled’ (1969) with its freely composed forms fully embodies Sydney's turn to pure abstraction. The artists’ rhythmic and harmonious compositions are influenced by dance, ballet and music which she studied from an early age. The free flowing, colourful structure of her painting of this period seems to convey the sense of freedom and excitement that characterised Britain in the swinging 60s.

Her daring colour combination invokes movement and drama and a large part of her production is dedicated to exploration of colour with movement, which was the focus of her 2018 retrospective at the Saatchi Gallery. The exhibition catalogue states: ‘When working on canvas Berenice limited herself to a palette of six colours, describing it as her “magic number”. Sydney became absorbed with the properties of colour and ascribed a personality to each, commenting on their respective traits she said: “some colours are nasty, some friendly and some have little character”. She started the painting at the centre of the canvas, building a journey of 'contained colour' in every direction and radiating outwards.’