Stanislaw
FRENKIEL
1918-2000
Profile & Bio
Frenkiel was born in 1918 in Krakow at the end of World War I as the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave way to a reborn Poland. His mother encouraged him to paint and draw and in October 1938 he enrolled as a student at The Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. The following spring he visited Paris, where he met Rouault and Kissling. He also visited Berlin where he visited the exhibition of “Degenerate Art” so despised by the Nazi authorities. In the summer of 1939, he returned to Krakow to resume his studies, much influenced by what he had seen. A few months after the Nazi occupation, Frenkiel and his future wife, Anna Leonora Neuman, escaped to Eastern Poland, which was occupied by the Soviets. Shortly after arriving in Lvov, he was arrested by the secret police for refusing to accept Soviet identity papers. He was tried and sentenced to three years in a prison camp. He survived forced labour, starvation rations and the freezing temperatures. He and other prisoners were released by Stalin and forcibly enlisted. He was reunited with Anna, who herself had survived deportation to Siberia and, in February 1942 they married in Kirghizia. Throughout this odyssey, Frenkiel continued to draw whenever he was able. Sadly, many of these works are lost. In April 1942, Frenkiel joined the Polish army and was sent to Persia. He became an officer, working with the British and was stationed in Iraq, Palestine and Egypt. His drawings of this time survive and offer a powerful visual record. In 1945, the army sponsored him to study at the Beirut Academy of Fine Art, where he qualified with a Silver medal. In 1947, he held his first one man show at the American University of Beirut. The drawings of this period bring to mind Rembrandt, Goya and Daumier in their sharply observed depictions of everyday life in the British and American occupied zones of the Middle East. In September 1947, at the age of 29, he was recalled to the army and posted to the United Kingdom, where he obtained a two year scholarship to study fine art at Sir John Cass College. In London, he met other talented Polish artists such as Topolski, Dzwig, Werner and Koscialkowski. In 1960, he obtained a degree in Art History at the Courtauld Institute. Between 1958 and 1986, Frenkiel taught art and art history at Wimbledon College and later, in the London University Institute of Education. Stanislaw Frenkiel was a genius of the 20th century. A figurative expressionist painter, a graphic artist and the author of a series of important essays on art. His work is marked by a passion for the magic which lies at the core of all great art. Distortion, incongruity, ambiguity and paradox create in each painting an unsettling world where love and death, joy and fear dance recklessly through the short pageant of life. But this is not a dark expressionism. The dancers and the acrobats, the butchers and the chefs, the freemasons, the prostitutes, the doormen, waiters, magicians, charlatans, the masters of ceremony – even the killers, all those at whom his canvasses are fired, with euphoria, lit with a blissful energy and determined to confound the lurking presence of death.
Major Exhibitions /
1947 Jeunes Peintres Polonais au Liban; American University, Beirut, Lebanon 1948 Art by Overseas Students; British Council, London, Great Britain 1949 Drawings by Stanislaw Frenkiel & Klub Towwarzyski, YMCA, London, Great Britain 1950 London Transport 4th Annual Exhibition, London, Great Britain 1952 Festival Pleasure Gardens, London, Great Britain 1956 London Provincial & Overseas Artists, Sheffield International Centre, Great Britain 1957 Music, mural for Sheffield Teacher Training College 1959 Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain, Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain Polnische Kunskt in England; Hamburg and Munich, Germany 1960 Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain, Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1962 Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain, Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1964 Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1965 Palac Sztuki, Krakow, Poland Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1968 Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1969 Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1970 Grand Prix Rencontre, Lyon, France Imperial College, London, Great Britain Contemporary Art by Polish Artists Abroad, Polish Social & Cultural Association, London, Great Britain Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1973 Gipsy Hill College, Kingston Museum and Art Gallery, Kingston upon Thames, Great Britain Gallerie Tamara Pfeiffer, Brussels, Belgium Grabowski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1976 Muzeum Narodowe W Warsawie, Polland - Exhibition of the Grabowski Gallery’s collection 1977 Bloomsbury Galleries, University of London, Great Britain 1978 Gallerie Tamara Pfeiffer, Brussels, Belgium London Group, Gulbenkian Galleries, Royal College of Art, London, Great Britain ULIE Arts Centre Gallery 1979 Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain, Posk Gallery, London, Great Britain 1980 Gallerie Tamara Pfeiffer, Brussels, Belgium 1981 Drian Galleries, London, Great Britain Retrospective Exhibition in Polish cities including Warsaw, Torun, Lodz, Krakow, Poznan 1982 Retrospective Exhibition in Polish cities including Warsaw, Torun, Lodz, Krakow, Poznan 1983 Retrospective exhibition, Bloomsbury Galleries, University of London, Great Britain 1984 London Group Open, Royal College of Art, London, Great Britain Museum Narodowe, Gdansk, Poland Polnischer Kunstler im Exil; Stadische Galerie, Villa Stercius, Landau-Sudring, Germany 1985 International Visual Arts Festival, Scarborough, Great Britain 133rd Annual Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain Jablonski Gallery, London, Great Britain Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 1986 Jablonski Gallery, London, Great Britain 134th Annual Exhibition Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 1987 London Group Open, Royal College of Art, London, Great Britain Bloomsbury Galleries, University of London, Great Britain Artists’ Members Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain London Group, Bede Gallery, Jarrow, Great Britain 135th Annual Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain Pictures for Poland, Medical Aid for Poland Fund, Jablonski Gallery, London, Great Britain 1988 Drian Gallery, London, Great Britain 136th Annual Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 1990 Salon Letni, Poland 4th Artists’ Members Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain Polish Cultural Institute, London, Great Britain 1991 2nd Open Printmaking Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 139th Annual Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 1992 London Group Open, Barbican, London, Great Britain 1993 Polish Roots, British Soil: City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Great Britain London Group Open, Concourse Gallery, Barbican Centre, London, Great Britain Ars Erotica, National Museum, Warsaw, Poland 1994 London Group, Morley Gallery, London, Great Britain 1995 Kennedy Gallery, Key West, Florida, United States 1996 3 Man Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain Autumn Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 1997 Paintings 1980 - 1997, Queen Street Fine Art Gallery, New South Wales, Australia 1998 Museum of History, Krakow, Poland 1999 Paintings and Etchings, Galerie Kunstzaken, Genk, Belgium 2003 Retrospective exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 2019 Refuge & Renewal: Migration & British art, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, Great Britain 2017 Polish Exhibition: a century of Polish artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, London, Great Britain
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