Sonja Forlov Mancoba | Grothcollection

Sonja Ferlov Mancoba (1911-1984) was a Danish-French sculptor. Her works includes paintings, collages, drawings and sculptures. She began her life as an artist in the mid-1930s and produced works until her death in 1984. Ferlov was a co-founder of the surrealist artists' association "Linien" and a member of the avant-garde movement CoBrA.

Sonja Ferlov starts at the School of Crafts in Copenhagen, where she goes to classes with Jacobine "Bizzie" Høyer. During this period she meets i.a. the artists Ejler Bille (1910-2004), Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen (1909-1957), Richard Mortensen (1910-1993) and Gertrud Hjorth (1913-2007), who become her friends. Ferlov, Bille and Mortensen go on to the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and study with, among others, Professor Aksel Jørgensen. Here they meet the artist Hans Øllgård (1911-1969). In these years, Ferlov also becomes friends with Birgitte "Pusser" Utzon-Frank (1916-2000).

Sonja Ferlov, Richard Mortensen, Ejler Bille, Hans Øllgaard and Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen form the surrealist association, "Linien" (1934-39).

During these years, Ferlov is in Gudhjem several times, where she visits her friends Lisbeth and Gertrud Hjorth, who are potters. In the summer of 1935, she is in Gudhjem with her friends Bille and Mortensen. They make sculptures from found branches and Sonja Ferlov creates, among other things,. Living branches, with which she debuts at ”Autumn painters of 1932” (The Surrealist Exhibition) in Odense.

Ferlov is enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris until 1942. She acquires a studio in rue du Moulin-Vert on Montparnasse and here becomes a neighbor and friend of the artist Alberto Giacometti. Ferlov exhibits at the line's international exhibition in Copenhagen together with a number of prominent surrealists such as Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy. Ferlov, together with his comrades, has before then sought out many of the surrealists in Paris to borrow works for the exhibition.

Already in Denmark, Ferlov is interested in non-Western art, but this interest and knowledge is developed in Paris, where she and Bille visit the newly opened ethnographic museum Musée de l'Homme. Through her Danish friends, she meets the South African artist Ernest Mancoba (1904-2002), who has moved to Paris to study at the Ècole des Arts Décoratifs. Sonja Ferlov and Ernest Mancoba become lovers, and he gets a studio in rue Hippolyte-Maindron in the neighboring property of her apartment and studio. When 2. World War breaks out in France in September, Ferlov and Mancoba decide to go to Denmark, but since Ernest Mancoba does not get an entry visa, he must stay behind.

Sonja Ferlov returns to Paris. Ernest Mancoba, who has British citizenship, is interned in a German prisoner of war camp, La Grande Caserne in St. Denis north of Paris. Ferlov visits Ernest Mancoba in the camp when she can access and in June 1942 they are married in La Grande Caserne. Sonja Ferlov is now called Ferlov Mancoba.

On June 6, 1946, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and Ernest Mancoba become parents to their only child, Marc Mancoba, called Wonga (1946-2015), who later in life becomes an artist herself.

In 1947, the family moved to Denmark and in the following years lives in a farmhouse in the village of Kattinge near Roskilde. Sonja Ferlov Mancoba exhibits i.a. at the Autumn Exhibition until it was dissolved in 1949, in addition Sonja and Ernest have contact with the Cobra group in these years and in 1950 a book about Sonja Ferlov Mancoba with text by Christian Dotremont from the series The Free Artists in the Cobra Library, edited by Asger Jorn, was published.

The family experiences intolerance in Denmark, and decides to move back to France and settles in the village of Oigny-en-Valois, approx. 80 km northwest of Paris. The house is provided by their close friends, Marcelle Renée Clarisse Penso (1917-2006) and Joachim Penso (1909-1974). Sonja and Clarisse write together throughout the years when the family lives in the house.

The entire Ferlov Mancoba family acquires French citizenship. They move in January from Oigny-en-Valois to rue du Chemin-de-Fer in Bondy, a suburb of Paris. In November they move again, now to a disused shop in 153, rue du Château on Montparnasse in Paris. Here Ferlov Mancoba starts working with larger sculptures again and it will be her studio and home until her death in 1984. She becomes a member of Den Frie Udstilling and sends works to Denmark and exhibits there at regular intervals from 1969-1985.