Poles apart – reclaiming Polish lives and visual arts in British art history
Despite the long-standing cultural and historical links between Britain and Poland, there is presently but a limited notion – in art histories written in Britain – of the steady cultural inflow of artists (and artists’ models) of Polish heritage.
Examples of such overlooked figures, going back to the 19th century, include Stanisława de Karłowska, Franciszka Themerson and Jorge Lewinski as well as the present generation of (Anglo-) Polish artists such as Andrzej Klimowski. Their life stories tie in with Poland’s stormy history, namely foreign occupation and/or warfare as well as religious and/or political oppression, resulting in ongoing waves of emigration and displacement. Their outputs often reveal cultural hybridity and outsider status, oscillating between Polish and British identity, subject-matter and influences, and hence frequently eluding British as well as Polish art histories. The critical vicissitudes of Feliks Topolski RA are a case in point for the invisibility of the Polish cultural inflow to Britain; despite his wide-ranging and major contributions to British culture, Topolski has never had an art historical monograph or a retrospective exhibition at a British (or Polish) national museum. He was written out of Polish art history by the communist authorities who ostracised émigré artists.
Timed to coincide with the British Council’s ‘2025 UK-Poland Year of Culture’, the session will aim to reclaim the often complex cultural identities, biographies and outputs of artists of Polish heritage active on British soil. It will double as a call to action and a brainstorming session about how the British and (Anglo-)Polish communities of art historians, curators, critics and artists can join forces with academic publishers and cultural organizations in expanding the canon to fix the chronic underrepresentation of (Anglo-) Polish visual arts.
Session Convenor:
Julia Griffin, Anglo-Polish Art Historian and Curator
Speakers:
Julia Griffin, Anglo-Polish Art Historian and Curator
Introduction: 200 Years of the Anglo-Polish Artistic Exchange (1795–Present)
The paper will offer a bird’s eye overview of 200 years’ worth of the Polish cultural inflow onto British soil, linking it to key waves of emigration and displacement, reflecting Poland’s stormy history. It will look at the presence of Anglo-Polish figures within the canon of British art, including museum collections, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries, and surveys of British art, whilst posing questions about the feasibility of Anglo-Polish art history.
Rebecca Lloyd James,University of Bristol
Stanisława de Karłowska (1876-1952): Polish? British? – Or both?
Over the course of a 50-year career, Stanisława de Karłowska produced more than 200 oil paintings, as well as woodcuts and watercolours. She belonged to important British art groups, including the London Group, the Friday Club and the Society of Wood Engravers. Active in London’s avant-garde, she was highly regarded in her lifetime, listed by Jacob Epstein as among the ‘genuine painters’ in England.[1] Today, though, she is very little known in Britain and, in Poland, her disappearance is even more absolute. This obscurity can be interpreted as part of the 20th-century’s occlusion of female artists. However, in Karłowska’s case, her dual cultural identity has also made art-historical definition difficult: she is both Polish and British which gives her ownership of neither nationality.
Karłowska built a career in Britain, while spending considerable time in Poland throughout her life. She maintained a passionate and committed interest in the country’s future, campaigning for Polish causes during the First and Second World Wars. Her work shows the importance of Polish subject matter and folk traditions and was early to embrace new European ideas. In 1921 she was one of only a handful of British-resident artists included in the Whitechapel Gallery’s Exhibition of Polish Art yet also counted herself an ‘artiste anglaise’ in a Paris exhibition in the same year. Examination of several of her paintings reveals how her hybrid cultural identity enriched her work, and made an original contribution to ‘British’ art.
Natalia Puchalska, Anglo-Polish Art Historian
Modernity, Art, and Immigration: The Parallel Yet Distinct Paths of Janina Flamm (1877-1922?) and Stanisława de Karłowska (1876-1952)
The intertwined lives and works of Janina Flamm and Stanisława de Karłowska, two Polish artists in early 20th-century London, provide a significant case study in the challenges and opportunities faced by émigré artists, particularly women, within a rapidly changing cultural landscape. Both trained in Poland and Paris, their trajectories in London diverged considerably, offering insights into the varied paths émigré women artists navigated in the UK during this period. While Karłowska, though largely forgotten for some time, has gradually been reintegrated into the canon of British modernism, Flamm, despite her evident talent, fell into obscurity. Her rediscovery, marked by the 2022 acquisition of her portrait of suffragette Barbara Duval to the UK Parliamentary Art Collection, represents a noteworthy moment in bringing her work to wider attention.
The legacies of Flamm and Karłowska illustrate the distinct ways in which they confronted and attempted to reshape established artistic and societal conventions. By addressing themes of gender, identity, and modernity, their works moved beyond the typical portrayal of women as subjects, instead asserting women’s active participation in the narratives of modern life. Through an examination of Flamm and Karłowska’s lives and artistic output, this study seeks to deepen our understanding of their overlooked contributions to the cultural and artistic landscape of early 20th-century London.
Lucien Topolski, Director of Topolski Memoir, Topolski Estate
Placing Topolski
A draughtsman, a painter, a chronicler of, and witness to the 20th Century, Feliks Topolski RA (1907-1989) bridged the gap between 19th-century illustrative reportage, harking back to his heroes Daumier and Hogarth, and the era of the ubiquitous, photographic image. Topolski’s insatiable appetite for all facets of life, and his capacity for automatically capturing it in its expressive, chaotic immediacy, led to him recording many of the last century’s vital cultural, artistic, political and social developments. Regularly described as ‘world recognised’ in his time, his place in art historical canon is far from well-defined and both he and his work have now largely fallen out of mainstream public memory.
This presentation aims to raise more questions than it answers by detailing the breadth of Topolski’s output throughout his career with insights from his largely unstudied archive and studio collection. From his origins as a caricature artist in his native Poland, through his experience as an official war artist for both Britain and Poland, to the artistic development of his painting and drawing through his observational reportage of the fall of empire, swinging sixties and transformative cultural shifts of the 70s and 80s, Topolski was versatile whilst retaining a coherent style and set of artistic and social principles.
Where should Topolski to be placed? As an expressionist painter? A monkish medieval impartialist draughtsman-chronicler? With a largely unstudied archive soon becoming available for study, placing Topolski’s work into its socio-artistic historical context is of real relevance.
Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, Independent art historian & curator
Showcasing Polish culture in post-war Britain: the art of Feliks Matyjaszkiewicz and Jadwiga Matyjaszkiewicz, née Prussak
Feliks Matyjaszkiewicz (1913-2007), a precociously talented and versatile artist, met his future wife, Jadwiga Prussak (1913-96), when both were students at the Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, Warsaw, 1932-36. Feliks subsequently designed stained-glass windows for a new church in Pruszków, also working as a book illustrator, while Jadwiga worked as a teacher – her vocation, alongside passion for crafts. War separated them in 1939, Feliks volunteering for military service and ending up in France. He escaped across the Pyrenees to Spain, where he was arrested and jailed, latterly in Miranda, his sketches of fellow prisoners including Jerzy (George) Zarnecki, future art historian of the Romanesque. On release Feliks joined the Polish army in Britain, where he was stranded after war ended. Jadwiga joined him eventually in London but was barred from paid work as a condition of living in Britain.
Feliks found work as a commercial artist, creating sculpture in paper or metal for shop-window and sales displays, as well as illustrations for advertisements. He also designed Polish book-covers and illustrations, posters, cards and logos. He painted and drew portraits, but was never able to focus on fine art as he wished and little of it was ever exhibited. In 1966 he made decorations for millennial celebrations of Poland’s Christianity at White City. From the 1960s-80s he and Jadwiga worked unpaid on the creation of scenery and costumes for over 40 Polish theatre productions by ZASP and Syrena, creating a uniquely Polish look that showcased Polish culture and history for post-war British-born Poles.
Anna Pawlikowska, Independent scholar, Aniela Pawlikowska and Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska Estate
Lela Pawlikowska (1901-1980): Artistic Freedom in a Conservative Corset
Lela Pawlikowska (1901–1980) is a largely unknown artist, both in Poland and in the UK, where she lived and worked from 1946 until her death.
There are many reasons for this. Before the Second World War, this mostly self-taught painter participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, won awards and commissions, and even had articles about her work published in British journals.
However, in post-war Poland, her name was blacklisted, not only because she was an émigré but also because she was the wife of a prominent far-right movements activist. Abroad—in Italy (1942–1946) and the UK—she had to focus on earning a livelihood to support her family. She painted portraits (e.g. of H.R.H. Maria Cristina di Borbone, S.A.R. Princess Alexandra of Kent, Lord FitzWalter, Lady Diana and Tilda Swinton as young children), often at the expense of developing her creative potential.
What interests us, however, is her artistic profile. Lela Pawlikowska came from an artistic family but her talent was recognized only by a few. Among them was her husband, Michał Pawlikowski. He nurtured her development, promoted her art, and documented her achievements.
However, his conservatism significantly influenced the direction of her artistic growth. Michał did not tolerate innovation in art, and Lela, the mother of their five children, subordinated herself entirely to him with Christian self-sacrifice. Yet, the strength of her talent is evident in the fact that, within the boundaries imposed by her husband and family—but also internalized by herself—she managed to create outstanding works. Showcasing these—both from the pre- and post-war periods—will be the central focus of my presentation.
Joanna Ciechanowska, Contemporary artist, Director of POSK Gallery
Emigration. Will I make it?
‘Emigration. Will I make it?’ was the title of the first, comprehensive survey of my work including over sixty paintings, drawings, original prints, illustrations and graphic design commissions, spanning the period 1971 to the present. Having left Poland during the communist regime in 1977, I came to Britain where I met my English civil engineer husband. Together we were sent to many international postings – from Iran, through Africa (including Lesotho and Egypt), to Hong Kong and post-communist Poland, where I was able to re-connect with my Polish roots, before settling down in Britain.
Working in my profession for over forty years in Britain, trying to integrate was my first desire and priority. Yet I didn’t realise how much my native roots are showing, sprouting new shoots even in commercial commissions where my ideas were accepted. Fine art is a different animal, though. Despite having been selected for prestigious exhibitions in public galleries – Whitechapel Gallery, Royal Academy, Somerset Gallery, Orlean’s House Gallery, Summerhall Gallery in Edinburgh, Pallant House Gallery in Chichester – I feel that being a Polish artist in Britain is a bit like running with a herd of zebras, but having different coloured stripes which are invisible to the colour blind people. We are somehow constantly being the ‘other’. Perhaps it would be an interesting starting point for a discussion about our position in British society, not only from the point of view of emigrants as I feel I am, but also those who arrived during the Second World War or their children who were born here. What is our identity and why are we invisible?
Ania Ruszkowski, Contemporary artist, Central Saint Martins
Representation of identity and hybridity within the Polish and Eastern European diaspora in the UK
This talk explores the evolving representation of identity and hybridity within the Polish and Eastern European diaspora in the UK. Engaging with the socio-political challenges and artistic underrepresentation faced by these communities forms an artist’s perspective. I am drawing on theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Roger Brubaker, to examine how identity is dynamic and shaped by the interplay of cultural histories and contemporary contexts, and the challenges of exploring this in an artistic practice.
The talk explores questions from an artist’s perspective of : How can I as an artist reinterpret the Anglo/Polish hybrid identity, through modern materials like resin and plaster – using their transformation to symbolize the resilience of hybrid identities, merging tangible historical traditions with contemporary techniques? How can process, materials and colour reflect themes of cultural homogenization and liminality, questioning the erasure of Eastern European identities within dominant narratives?
How can I as an Anglo/Polish artist embrace a multidisciplinary process—blending mediums with heritage crafts to contemporise them and to articulate the complexities of Anglo-Polish hybridity? This iterative practice resists categorization, creating works that merge histories and geographies.
Ultimately, this talk advocates for de-centring Western European dominance in art and creating space for Eastern European perspectives to redefine the UK’s cultural landscape.
Marta Marsicka, University of the Arts London, Artist Development Coordinator at BACKLIT in Nottingham
Between Stereotype and Subversion – Folk in the Practices of Contemporary Polish Artists in the UK
This presentation critically examines the folk inspirations in the work of contemporary Polish artists based in the UK, specifically Katarzyna Perlak, Rafał Zajko, and Magda Blasinska. I explore their practices as immigrant artists within the context of Polish folk-style constructions, inspirations and appropriations during the 19th and 20th centuries and later in the interwar and communist eras. Historically, folk motifs and themes in Polish art were appropriated for varied purposes, from exploring national identity under foreign occupations to constructing a modernist synthesis of tradition and progress and utilising folk elements to promote conservative ideologies.
In post-Brexit Britain, folk reappears in the practices of a younger generation of artists, who navigate their work within a landscape shaped by political and cultural upheaval, intense competition for art funding, and policies emphasising Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) aimed at supporting underrepresented creatives. Meanwhile, in Poland, folk art history and its cultural appropriations are increasingly reexamined through feminist and decolonial perspectives. I argue that in the UK, folk-inspired imagery in Polish artists’ work both aligns with and resists representational expectations tied to national identity. Following Piotr Piotrowski’s observation expressed in In the Shadow of Yalta (2005), wherein Polish artists working abroad balanced foreign art codes with culturally specific signifiers to fulfil their role as “Othered” outsiders, I propose that Perlak, Zajko, and Blasinska’s works occupy a liminal space where folk imagery juxtaposes queer and feminist elements to engage a complex representational discourse.