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Feliks Topolski, a visual chronicler, portrait artist, illustrator, and author, was
born in
Warsaw, Poland, on August 14, 1907, the only child of actor Edward Topolski and Stanislawa
Drutowska. He was a student at the Mikolaj Rey School. He studied at the Warsaw Academy
of
Art from 1927 to 1932, during which time he also served as a cadet at the Artillery
Officers' School. 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.
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Topolski spent time studying on his own in France and Italy before traveling to England
in
1935 to record George V's Silver Jubilee for a Polish magazine. He remained in London
and
connected with the group that included Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, J. B. Priestley,
Anthony
Powell, and William Empson. He provided illustrations for Night and Day, a short-lived London periodical for which Greene was
a coeditor. Topolski also worked for the News Chronicle and published his
first book, The London Spectacle (1935), with drawings collected
from his work for the Chronicle. He met and befriended Bernard Shaw, who
had Topolski illustrate his Geneva, In Good King Charles's Golden Days, and Pygmalion. |
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During World War II Topolski worked as a war artist and served as a Polish army officer.
He
was wounded in the London Blitz, accompanied patrol duty in the Arctic, fought with
the
Polish 2nd Corps in Italy, traveled to the Russian front, Burma, and China, accompanied
the
allied troops into France and Germany, witnessed the liberation of the prisoners at
the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and attended the Nuremberg trials. Topolski's drawings
from the war were published in three books: Britain in Peace and War (1941), Russia in War (1942), and Three Continents, 1944-45 (1946). |
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Topolski became a British subject in 1947. In the years after the war he traveled
to India
at the invitation of Pandit Nehru, where he saw the end of the British Raj. He witnessed
the
liberation conflicts in Malaya and Indo-China. As he continued to create works that
chronicled events, Topolski also established himself as a portrait artist. He produced
murals, notably the Cavalcade of Commonwealth for the Festival of
Britain, 1951; the Coronation of Elizabeth II, 1959, commissioned by
the Duke of Edinburgh for a corridor in Buckingham Palace; and the Memoir of the Century, begun in 1975 under the arches of the
Hungerford Railway Bridge. His illustrations appeared in numerous publications, including
Punch and Lilliput. He created portraits
for the BBC television series Face to Face, and designed
theatrical sets and costumes. His works were exhibited internationally. |
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Among the works authored by Topolski are Portrait of G. B. S. (1946),
Confessions of a Congress Delegate (1949), and Shem, Ham & Japheth, Inc: the American Crucible (1971). |
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Topolski established his studio in Waterloo in 1953; it was at this time that he began
publishing his Topolski's Chronicle, works of text and illustration
which he printed himself, producing twenty-four issues a year from 1953 to 1979. |
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Topolski married Marian Everall in 1944 (divorced 1975). They had a son, Daniel, and
a
daughter, Theresa. He married Caryl J. Stanley in 1975. He died August 24, 1989, in
London. |
