FT & it’s in SW19 | Franciszka Themerson | Friday 29 September until 10 October 2017

FT & it’s in SW19 | Franciszka Themerson | Friday 29 September until 10 October 2017

Private View Thursday 28 September from 5 pm to 8 pm

FT & it’s in SW19

This exhibition revisits Franciszka Themerson’s time spent in London SW19 when she was teaching at Wimbledon School of Art in the 1960s. While there, she oversaw the production of a student magazine entitled it’s, produced annually from 1964 to 1966. Her work with students involved graphic design, stage design, concrete poetry and the new preoccupations of the art world at the time.

This exhibition includes Franciszka Themerson's work in the theatre, her drawings during the sixties, and the four issues of the intellectually inventive it's, which reveal the range of ideas to which students were introduced by her teaching.

its magazine - Wimbledon school of art 1967 - FT.pdf

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T : 020 8417 0209|  M : 07775 828 465|  E :  media@gvart.co.uk

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

 Franciszka Themerson was born in Warsaw in 1907, lived in Paris 1938-40, and then, from 1940, lived in London until her death in 1988. She was principally a painter, although, throughout her life, she also worked in several other fields of the visual arts.

During the 1930s, she collaborated with her husband, the writer Stefan Themerson, on experimental films and illustrated children’s books which he wrote. Then in 1948 in London they founded the adventurous publishing house, Gaberbocchus Press, of which she was art director.

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

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

Her major one-man exhibitions have included shows at Gallery One, 1957 and 1959; a retrospective at Drian Galleries, 1963; Zacheta, Warsaw, 1964; New Gallery, Belfast, 1966; Demarco, Edinburgh, 1968; a retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1975; Gruenebaum, New York, 1978; Lodz, Warsaw and Wroclaw, 1981-82; a drawings retrospective at Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, 1991, and at Gardner Centre, Sussex University, 1992;  Gdansk, 1993; Redfern Gallery, 1993; the National Theatre, London, 1993; Royal Festival Hall, London, 1993;  Themersons & Gaberbocchus Press, New York, 1994; Gaberbocchus Press at Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1996; Imperial War Museum, London, 1996; 'White Paintings’, Kordegarda, Warsaw, 1999; Zamek, Poznan, 2004; Europe House, London, 2013; F & S Themerson Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, 2013;  F & S Themerson, Camden Arts Centre, 2016; l’Étrangère, London, 2016; theatre design (UBU), Richard Saltoun, 2017. This is the second solo exhibition of Franciszka Themerson with GV Art London. The first one, in 2013, was called, Why is the Mind in the Head.

GV Art London are the exclusive agents for the Themerson Estate.

GV Art London will present the exhibition It was Paradise by Rachel Gadsden at the Norman Plastow Gallery 13 October - 23 October 2017.

The Norman Plastow Gallery is a versatile community exhibition space which forms part of the Wimbledon Village Hall Trust facilities and is an important part of its charitable provision. Full details at www.wimbledonvht.org.uk/the-village-hall-gallery

 Norman Plastow Gallery                       Monday to Sunday 11am – 6pm

Village Hall, 26 Lingfield Road              or by appointment

Wimbledon Village                               Admission Free

London SW19 4QD                            

GETTING THERE

The Gallery is on the first floor, the Village Hall, Lingfield Road, off Ridgway, which is at the top of Wimbledon Hill Road. Parking is metered until 6.30pm. Nearest station Wimbledon.