Talk: The Themersons - At Home and Abroad

This talk explores the unique contribution that the artists, writers, film-makers and publishers Franciszka (1907-1988) and Stefan Themerson (1910-1988) made to literary and artistic life in Britain. The Themersons were part of the wave of émigrés and refugees who fled from Hitler’s Europe to Britain, and so enriched culture here in the post-war period.

Franciszka and Stefan Themerson were originally from Warsaw and married in 1931. They spent much of the 1930s making experimental films in Poland. In 1938, Franciszka and Stefan moved to Paris in order to pursue their work at the centre of the art world. Following the German invasion of France in 1940, Franciszka escaped to London to work for the Polish Government in Exile, whilst Stefan was left stranded in France, having joined the Polish Army in France. During this period, Franciszka produced a remarkable series of drawings reflecting on her experiences and their separation, the Unposted Letters, which feature in the Wiener Library’s One Family, Three Cities, Six Years of War exhibition. The couple were reunited in 1942 in London, where they started to rebuild their lives, together and independently. In 1948, they founded Gaberbocchus Press, the first avant-garde press in Britain. They published the first English translations of Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters and Raymond Queneau, alongside producing artworks and their own publications.

Please register for tickets via The Wiener Library website