ART-PRESENTATION: Franciszka Themerson & Ubu
Franciszka Themerson was born in 1907, Poland and died in 1988, London. she graduated from the Academy of Fine Art in Warsaw 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.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Richard Saltoun Gallery Archive
The exhibition “Franciszka Themerson & Ubu” at Richard Saltoun Gallery in London is Franciszka Themerson’s first exhibition with the Gallery. “Ubu Roi” is a play by Alfred Jarry. It was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, causing a riotous response in the audience as it opened and closed on 10/12/1896. It is considered a wild, bizarre and comic play, significant for the way it overturns cultural rules, norms, and conventions. The first word of the play (“merdre”, the French word for “shit”, with an extra “r”) may have been part of the reason for the response to the play in Paris. At the end of the performance a riot broke out, after this “Ubu Roi” was outlawed from the stage, and Jarry moved it to a puppet theatre. For those who were in the audience on that night to witness the response, including William Butler Yeats, it seemed an event of revolutionary importance. It is now seen by some to have opened the door for what became known as Μodernism in the 20th Century. “Ubu Roi” was the first play in history to draw attention to the artificiality of theatre conventions and reject 19th Century methods for creating the illusion of the real. The play’s punk innovations marked the turn of the Avant-garde. Franciska Themerson spent most of her artistic mid-life immersed in an obsession with Ubu . In 1948, impassioned by the seminal cultural importance of Jarry’s play, she and her husband Stefan. Gaberbocchus Press (founded in 1948 by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson) published the first English edition of Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Roi” in 1951, translated by Barbara Wright. She wrote the text directly onto litho plates and Franciszka Themerson drew 204 illustrations over this text. The book was printed in black on yellow paper. In 1951 London’s ICA held a groundbreaking performance where actors sat at a long table and recited the script, whilst wearing elaborately grotesque theatrical papier-mâché masks made by Themerson. In 1963-64, she designed Michael Meschke’s production of “Kung Ubu”, a puppet production of the play at Marionetteatern, Stockholm, where the characters morphed into disturbing life sized puppets carrying wooden flat cut-out “body-masks”, reminiscent of Dadaist costume. The play toured globally for 20 years and was made into a film. On exhibition are 12 bizarre and fabulous original papier-mâché masks together with film, historical images and documentation are on full display in the exhibition together with comic strip drawings, works on paper, collages, photographs and theatre posters.
Info: Richard Saltoun Gallery, 111 Great Titchfield Street, London, Duration: 21/7-15/9/17, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-18:00, www.richardsaltoun.com
