Topolski feliks biography samples
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During the Second World War he was appointed an official war artist for the Polish government in exile, and then for the British government, commissioned to make drawings of life in London during the air raids of October 1940. He held solo shows at London galleries including the Grosvenor, Leger, and Leicester Galleries, among others.
Throughout his life Topolski travelled extensively, and frequently met leading global figures, including Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King.
His work is in UK collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Government Art Collection, The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Trust (Wightwick Manor).
Ben Uri Research Unit
Born:1907 Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland)
Died:1989 London, England
Year of Migration to the UK:1935
Other name/s: Felix Topolski, Felicjan Typlel-Topolski, Felicjan Topolski, Felicjan Tylpel, Feliks Topolski RA
Biography
Painter, draughtsman, set designer, muralist, and illustrator, Feliks Topolski was born Felicjan Typlel-Topolski in Warsaw, Congress Kingdom of Poland, Russian Empire (now Poland) on 14 August 1907, to politically progressive, assimilated Jewish parents, who later converted to Lutheranism.
In 1959 HRH Prince Philip commissioned a mural series depicting HM Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation at Westminster Abbey. He became friends with writer, Graham Greene, contributing illustrations to the magazine Night and Day (co-edited by Greene) and to the News Chronicle. Topolski was also known for his portraits of writers including H.
G. Wells, Graham Greene, John Mortimer and Evelyn Waugh, and politicians Harold Macmillan and Aneurin Bevan. Following periods of closure, the studio is open once again, hosting exhibitions and functioning as an educational charity promoting Topolski’s works.
Feliks Topolski died in London, England on 24 August 1989.
22). This opportunity was the starting point for the Coronation murals which he painted for Buckingham Palace in 1958-60. A copy of Topolski's own account of his 'Memoir', and how it came into being, is enclosed. 6). It remains there in its original site as a memorial to him, still open to the public (together with his studio) as it was during his lifetime.
From 1940-45 he was appointed Official Polish War Artist, and visited every front except the Pacific, producing a prolific record of the Second World War which was widely published. At the age of seventy-three he decided to join his writer/photographer son, Daniel, on a six-month journey through South America. Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield (2014)
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Related books
- Rachel Dickson, ed., From Adler to Zulawski: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain (London: BURU, 2020)
- Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, Polish Art in Exile in Matthew Bateson's London Collection (Warsaw: Studia y Materialy, 2020)
- Laura Brandon, Jonathan Mogul, and Nicolae Harsanyi, An Artist on the Eastern Front: Feliks Topolski, 1941 (Wolfsonian-Florida International University, 2015)
- Pole Position, exh.
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- Feliks Topolski: an Important Collection of Drawings 1930-1960 (London: Bookshop Gallery, 1978)
- Barry Fealdman, ‘Art. He also visited the Russian Front for “Picture Post” magazine for six months from 1941-42 and made independent submissions to the War Artists' Advisory Commitee until the end of the war. L., ‘The Government Inspector’, Jewish Chronicle, 13 February 1948, p.