Born in Poland in 1907, son of the actor Edward Topolski, educated at the Warsaw Academy of Art, then self-tutored in Italy and in Paris before settling in England in 1935, Feliks Topolski is an incredibly prolific artist in every field. One of the official British War Artists, and commissioned by the Crown to picture the Coronation ceremonies, his paintings hang in galleries the world over. Bernard Shaw was enchanted by his drawings, and for him Topolski illustrated Pygmalion, Geneva, and In Good King Charles’ Golden Days. Murals in Singapore, theatrical designs for London, on-the-scene pictorial reporting for LifeFortuneVogue and Harper’s Bazaar, a book of studies of Mahatma Gandhi, a book of portraits of Shaw—Topolski is deeply absorbed in the moment, with the great figures and with the pulsating life of the street as well. An inveterate world traveler, with enthusiasm and hummingbird quickness he fills innumerable notebooks with his tense, trenchant sketches, the best of which he publishes in a twice-monthly folio broadside called Topolski’s Chronicle published from his atelier at 14 Hanover Terrace in London.

 

       — E. W.