Albany Fine Art : Biography of Feliks TOPOLSKI

Feliks TOPOLSKI, RA

Polish/English, 1907-1989

Painter, caricaturist, illustrator, muralist and set designer, described as the “greatest artistic chronicler of our times”

Born in Warsaw in 1907, Feliks Topolski was the only child of Edward Topolski, an actor, and Stanislawa Drutowska. He studied art at the Warsaw Academy of Art from 1927 to 1932, and was a cadet at the Officers' School of Artllery Reserve. While still a student, he contributed drawings to the periodical Cyrulik Warszawski (The Warsaw Barber), and received a commission to paint a mural for the hall of the Polish Institute for the Promotion of Modern Art.

He was sent to London by a Polish journal to record the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. After a period spent studying on his own in Italy and Paris, he arrived in London in 1935. His first commissions in London were as a newspaper and journal illustrator and he was to remain in London the next 54 years, lead a highly eventful life and become an established figure on the London literary and artistic scene.

A man of great charm, Topolski made friends easily and he was quickly accepted into a talented literary group that included, among others, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, JB Priestley, Anthony Powell and William Empson.

One of his most important friendships was with George Bernard Shaw. ‘Summoning’ the young Topolski to his rooms in Whitehall in 1938, Topolski recalled that he “went in the spirit of a pilgrimage to a godhead”. Their friendship blossomed and Shaw was soon asking “Dear Filipovsky” to illustrate Geneva, In Good King Charles’s Golden Days, St Joan and Pygmalion. Shaw also allowed Topolski to draw “endless likenesses" of him and the result was three full-length portraits and the publication, in 1946, of the book, Portrait of GBS. Bernard Shaw later described Topolski as, "...an astonishing draughtsman, perhaps the greatest of all the Impressionists in black and white."

During World War II Topolski was initially attached to the Polish forces in Britain as an Official War Artist and, in 1941, as an Official British War Artist. He was in London to record the Battle of Britain and he was wounded whilst on duty during the London Blitz in 1942. He was then sent to the Middle East by the Illustrated London News and travelled in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine before continuing on to India, China and Burma. He fought with the Polish 2nd Corps in Italy, went on Arctic patrol duty aboard the Llanstephan Castle in 1942, travelled to the Russian front, entered France and Germany with the Allied armies, witnessed the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and recorded the Nuremberg trials.

Topolski was recognised as one of the great war artists and published three books of his wartime drawings, Britain in Peace and War (1941), Russia in War (1942), and Three Continents, 1944-45 (1946).

In the post-War period he continued to document political upheaval and its consequences during his extensive travels throughout the world whilst also turning to the creation of much larger-scale work, including murals. He was invited to India by Pandit Nehru, the first Prime Minister of the newly-independent state, saw the end of British rule, and painted the mural, The East (1949-50). He went on to witness the liberation conflicts in Malaya and Indo-China, spent time in the United States, and returned to Britain to create a large mural (60ft x 20ft), The Cavalcade of Commonwealth, for The Festival of Britain, 1951.

Topolski became a British citizen in 1947 by which time he had also established himself as a portrait artist. In subsequent years he portrayed many world leaders and international figures, including Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Harold Macmillan, Aneurin Bevan, Bertrand Russell, Graham Green and T S Elliot.

Topolski witnessed the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 as an Official Artist and, in 1960, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh commissioned him to produce The Coronation Frieze, as a record of Coronation Day, to be permanently exhibited in a specific location in the Lower Corridor of Buckingham Palace. The painting was made in 14 sections, each well over a metre high and, at almost 30 metres in length, it is the longest work of art in the Royal Collection. Topolski said of the project, "These panoramas are not meant to be a diligent document of the processional order, uniforms, robes and likenesses. It was an agreement with my patron that all these should be subjected to the compositional sweep, the calligraphy of movement - to the 'mood' of my interpretation; that they should not be information-bound, but be 'contemporary paintings', independent of dead-wood conventions."

From 1953 to 1979 he published 348 issues of Topolski's Chronicle, which he produced without advertisements or subsidies. They contained some 3,000 drawings and represent a body of work which has been described as “the most brilliant record we have of the contemporary scene as seized by a contemporary mind.”

In 1961-62 Topolski received a major commission from the University of Texas at Austin to paint Britain’s Twenty Literary Greats. He completed these wonderfully playful portraits of the 20 great living writers of England in 1962: W.H. Auden, John Betjeman, Cyril Connolly, Ivy Compton-Burnett, T.S. Eliot, Shelagh Delaney, William Empson, E.M. Forster, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, C. Day Lewis, Louis MacNiece, John Osborne, J.B. Priestley, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell, C.P. Snow, Stephen Spender, Edith Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, John Whiting, and Arnold Wesker.

Topolski created murals for the Carlton Tower Hotel, London (1960) and the St Regis Hotel, New York (1965) and published his work in many magazines, including Night and Day, Punch, The Illustrated London News and Lilliput, as well as in some 30 illustrated books. He created portraits of the famous interviewees for the BBC television series Face to Face, and designed theatrical sets and costumes. His works were exhibited internationally.

In 1975 he set out to create a mammoth work, The Memoir of the Century which was to absorb him for the rest of his life. This 600-foot long panoramic painting, standing from 12 to 20 feet high, was created in his studio in the railway arches beneath Hungerford Bridge, on London's South Bank (now the Topolski Centre). The Memoir was Topolski's attempt to paint the 20th century and all the great dramas are there together with portraits of around 700 of its leading figures.

Topolski gave his Memoir to the ‘People of London’ in 1984 and it was still unfinished at the time of his death in 1989, at the age of 82. The burden of upkeep subsequently proved too great and, in 2002, the Topolski family stepped in and established a new trust to assume ownership of the work and oversee its restoration and display. The newly restored Memoir is planned to be on permanent exhibition from 2009, twenty years after the artist’s death.

Topolski was a member of the Royal Academy and his works are to be seen in the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Imperial War Museum, Theatre Museum, The Tate and many other galleries including those in Nottingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Brooklyn, Toronto, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Melbourne, Lisbon, and, in Poland, in Warsaw and at the University of Cracow.

The Oxford Companion to Art says of the artist, "Topolski...stands out among other 20th century artists for his virtuosity as a draughtsman and his panoramic vision, consistently exploring the recording function of the artist-draughtsman.''