Franciszka Themerson
Stories from the life
Franciszka Themerson at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
DRAWINGS of INTERI o RS IN SCHNACKENBURG
brush and ink on paper, 1929, attached to sheets of grey paper of various sizes
Interior at Schnackenburg (I ) *
26.5 × 21 cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (II ) *
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (IV )
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (VI )
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (VII )
26.5 × 21cm, signed in full in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (VIII )
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (IX )
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (X )
21 × 26.5 cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated
Interior at Schnackenburg (XI )
26.5 × 21cm, signed with initials in pencil and dated, removed from grey mount
STUDIES fo R THE DANCE brush and ink on paper, 1929
Study for The Dance (I ) *
20.5 × 14 cm, signed in pencil
Study for The Dance (II ) *
20 × 13.5 cm
o IL PAINTINGS
The Dance 1929, 114 × 63 cm
Interior [Restaurant]
c.1930, 104 × 86 cm
Pracownia [Workshop]
c.1931, 117 × 79 cm, signed exhibited Instytut Propagandy Sztuki, Warsaw, c.1931/32
DRAWINGS IN THE o PEN AIR brush and ink on paper, 1933
Trees in the street (2)
15.5 × 20 cm, signed in pencil and dated
Figures in front of a large building (3)
15.25 × 20, signed in pencil and dated
Windy landscape (4) *
15.5 × 20 cm, signed in pencil and dated
Figure on the road (1) *
15.25 × 20 cm, signed in pencil and dated
Large building, stormy street (6)
15.5 × 20 cm, not signed
Sunken road (8)
15 × 20 cm, signed in pencil and dated
Trees and stormy sky (9)
15 × 20 cm, not signed
Trees in the park (10)
15.25 × 20 cm, signed in pencil and dated
I DRAWINGS of INTERI o RS IN SCHNACKENBURG
II STUDIES fo R THE DANCE
III o IL PAINTINGS
The Dance, 1929, 114 × 63 cm
Interior [Restaurant], c.1930, 104 × 86 cm
Pracownia [Workshop], c.1931, 117 × 79 cm, signed
IV DRAWINGS IN THE o PEN AIR
We don’t know much about Franciszka’s student days and early work. However, what we do know is that her surname at the School of Fine Art in Warsaw was spelled Wajnlejz instead of Weinles, that in the students’ lists her number was 1613, and that she entered the School in 1924. Furthermore, when applying to the School, she mentioned: ‘In drawing I wasn’t trained specially but during my whole life I was guided by my father, artist painter.’ 1 We also know that her work was praised throughout her studies, and that in 1931, her last year, she was selected during the final exams as the best student from the whole institution.
It was only a year later the School acquired the title Academy of Fine Art. The painting students were principally in the care of one of the three professors, each of whom directed his own studio. Initially attached to the Studio of Professor Miłosz Kotarbin´ski, three years later at her own request, Franciszka went to study painting with Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, a well-known portraitist, who taught there 1930–32 and had a studio in Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula. He encouraged students to work in the open air, to paint and to draw at the same time, and to experiment inventing their own methods of applying paint to canvas with any instruments from a piece of wood to the elbow. The students were divided into four groups including Loz ˙ a Wolnomalarska to which Franciszka belonged. What else do we know about those early days? Franciszka’s interests extended beyond the art in Poland, and like many students and intellectuals of the 1920s, she looked towards Paris as the centre of the art world. We know that she wanted to go to Paris to study art history, and the development of colour in Impressionism is mentioned. In May 1931, she made an unsuccessful application to the School for a research grant to spend 2 months in Paris. At the time she was working as an illustrator of various publications for children and would have had to free herself from those tasks. In the end, when she did get to Paris it was with Stefan in 1937, when they were preparing film screenings of the French avant-garde in Poland. A year later both moved to Paris.
There are only three paintings that have survived from those early days, 1929–31. And they are very different from everything
1 Jakub Weinles, 1870–1938, painter of Jewish culture
that was to follow, that we have seen in exhibitions and reproduced in books. We don’t know precisely how these three oil paintings survived the war. It is possible that when the Themersons moved to Paris in 1938, Franciszka took them with her. The paintings, we can presume, stayed in Paris, hidden somewhere during the war, and when Stefan Themerson visited Paris in 1947, he collected them and brought them to London. Were they rolled up? We don’t know. For some time, they stayed in Franciszka’s studio behind the canvases she was working on subsequently. After she died, in 1988, all her paintings moved to mine and Nick Wadley’s house in Belsize Park, and these three works were restored. Looking at them we see what and how Franciszka was painting when she was finishing her course at the Academy. She must have considered these three paintings important because these were the only works in oil that were brought from Paris after the War. Stefan talked about her work at the time as composed of blocks of colour, as indeed these are, and he may have been referring to these very paintings, which are unlike most paintings that were to follow. The surfaces of the painted areas are minutely textured, separate, but locked together. There are no gaps, no empty spaces that are so common in the later paintings. While the later works in oil are like drawings on the surface of the canvas, these very early ones are composed of areas that abut on one another without gaps between the painted forms. They are dense, tonal with an occasional exclamation like the pink hyacinth which bursts out from the surface in the green interior. These characteristics are of applying paint to the surface, but what is also important here is the subject matter. The subjects are interiors in warm brown, beige, green tones. There is a restaurant, a dressmaking workshop, and an entertainment hall in Schnackenburg. In each one, the characters are occupied with some activity relevant to their environment. In the restaurant painting, the father expresses disapproval of his son’s behaviour; elsewhere, in another group scene, there is a girl dancing and perhaps just learning the steps, and in the green dress workshop we notice the models follow the curve of the furniture. All three paintings are of interiors filled with figures. After arriving in London 2 during the war, Franciszka stopped painting. She drew in ink on paper and during the two years
2 Working as cartographer for the Polish government-in-exile
of her separation from Stefan she made the series of 140 ink and gouache drawings on paper, she called Unposted Letters. She returned to painting on canvas at some point in 1943 and during the following two years there are some paintings reminiscent of the earlier works in that they both depict interiors and/or figures in space. These, however, are already different. They include in the surround, abstract and decorative elements, which she was later to develop in her abstract paintings. But here the important echoes are that they still contain references to interior spaces, which led gradually to abstract works of the 1940s. Two of them are Encounter within walls, and Composition (Harlequin in a boat), (these later works are not included in this catalogue).
Apart from the three 1929 paintings, Franciszka kept preparatory sketches on paper made with a brush dipped in ink. The ink sketches follow the broad gesture of the hand, and the subject matter is repeated. Two of the subjects in these drawings, which were also realised in one oil painting, were made in Schnackenburg, the smallest town in Lower Saxony on the Elbe, probably in the town hall, which Franciszka must have visited at the time. She signs them either F. Themerson, or F. Them, which dates them to 1931 when she married Stefan Themerson. The only other sketches are the brush and ink images on paper of windblown views of the landscape and the sea, and people running, through the rain, dated 1933. It is difficult to imagine that nothing else may be found of the early work. They may not be signed, and we may miss them. Even so, with these examples of Franciszka’s early work some significant examples of her history have been recovered.
Jasia Reichardt
This catalogue was produced on occasion of Franciszka Themerson, Stories from the Life, at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 20 February – 23 May 2025. It was edited by Jasia Reichardt, designed by Pedro Cid Proença and printed by Pureprint in an edition of 500 copies. All drawings are reproduced here at 66% scale, with the exception of pp.8–9 (100%), and pp.36–37 (140%). The three early paintings and the 18 early drawings, made in Poland and illustrated in this catalogue are to be donated to the National Museum in Warsaw. With warm thanks to Robert Devčic´ for help, Jason Bevan and Becky Cohen for photography and all at Ben Uri Gallery, but principally, David Glasser and Sarah MacDougall.
Uri Gallery and Museum 108A Boundary Road, London NW 8 0RH Monday–Friday 10am – 5.30pm Saturday and Sunday 11am – 5pm benuri.org 020 7604 3991
