Franciszka Themerson

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Franciszka Themerson ( 28 June 1907 - 29 June 1988) was a Polish, later British painter, illustrator, film-maker and stage designer.

The daughter of the artist, Jakub Weinles, she was born in Warsaw in 1907. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw with great distinction, in 1931. She lived in Paris from 1938 to 1940, and then, from 1940, lived in London until her death in 1988. She was principally a painter, although, throughout her life, she worked in several other fields of the visual arts: illustration, stage design and graphic design.

She collaborated with her husband, the writer Stefan Themerson, on experimental films, illustrated books for children which he wrote, and in 1948 she founded with him the adventurous publishing company Gaberbocchus Press, of which she was the art director. Named after the Latin for 'Jabberwocky', from a later translation made by Lewis Carroll's uncle, Hassard Dodgson. In 31 years the Gaberbocchus Press published over sixty titles, including works by Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters, Bertrand Russell and the Themersons themselves. Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi became one of the most celebrated plays and was published in many editions.

Apart from appearing in many journals world-wide, several collections of her drawings have been published as books: The Way It Walks, 1954; Traces of Living, 1969; Franciszka Themerson, London 1941-42, 1987; The Drawings of Franciszka Themerson, 1991.

Her theatre designs included marionette productions of Ubu Roi, Ubu Enchainé and Threepenny Opera. Many of these were exhibited at the National Theatre in [1993].

Her major one-man exhibitions include those at Gallery One in 1957 and 1959; Drian Galleries, 1963; Zachęta, Warsaw, 1964; New Gallery, Belfast, 1966; Demarco, Edinburgh, 1968; A retrospective at Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1975; Gruenebaum, New York, 1978; Łódź, Warsaw, Wrocław, 1981-1982; Nordjyllands Kunstmusum, Aalborg, 1991; Gardner Centre, University of Sussex, 1992; Gdańsk, 1993; Redfern Gallery, 1993; National Theatre, 1993; Royal Festival Hall, 1993. Unposted Letters, Imperial War Museum in 1996; Kordegarda, Warsaw, 1998; Art First, London, 1999 and 2001; CK Zamek, Poznan, 2004.