Topolski art underneath the arches

Between 1975 and his death in 1989, the Polish-born illustrator Feliks Topolski painted a history of the 20th century in his own personal museum underneath the arches of Hungerford Bridge.

For years this project fell into decay, Topolski’s friezes, painted with Dulux, gradually acquiring unwanted graffiti. The restoration project has been a 10-year labour of love, led by his two children.

Now the visitor wanders through a mini-labyrinth of restored painted panels, full of portraits of the famous and images of the great political events of the era.

Born in 1907 in Warsaw, Topolski was a Polish artist who moved to London in the late Thirties. Here, he became one of the most in-demand illustrators of his time — with commissions from Picture Post to Prince Philip, permitting him to lead an existence that makes Zelig, Benjamin Button and Forrest Gump look like they never left their front door.

He was an official war artist and accompanied an Arctic convoy to Russia in 1941; he was in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp two weeks after its liberation in 1945; he sketched at the Nuremberg trials. He was in China in 1966 for the Cultural Revolution, and met the Black Panthers in 1968, all the while organising acid parties in London with his hippy friends.

The walls are crowded with portraits — Mao, Nehru, George Bernard Shaw and scores more literary and political personages. Topolski was friends with most of them, apparently. One clue to his character is provided by a scene from Egypt in the Forties, in which King Farouk spanks the bottom of writer and bohemian Barbara Skelton — he’d just heard that she’d been double-dating with the artist.

So the stories are great but Topolski’s painting, it must be said, is rather hard work. As an illustrator in ink he was a genius — the many reproductions, printed alongside well-written texts on the wall, demonstrate that — but he paints in an excessively loose Expressionist style that many will find tiring. There are many hidden treats in this historically significant monument, which tells the story of the 20th century as you’ve never been told it before but you may need a guided tour to get the most from it.

Open daily 11am-7pm, free entry. Information: www.topolskicentury.org.uk.
Rebecca Warren’s exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery runs until 19 April, not until 10 March as earlier stated. Information: www.serpentinegallery.org

Topolski Century re-opens
Topolski Century
150-152 Hungerford Arches, Concert Hall Approach, Waterloo, SE1 8XU