A Selection from the Artist’s Estate
THIS EXHIBITION WAS HELD IN 2017
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.“I remember arriving in West Berlin at the Brandenburg Tor on the 13th August 1961, the morning after the night before – the East Germans had closed off East Berlin overnight dividing the city, barbed wire at every checkpoint. Feliks got out of the car and, with my mother Marion talking to them, sketched the exhausted trembling young East German soldiers, rifles shaking … New York, 1968, Andy Warhol’s “Factory” studio on Union Square and then scrambling into the stretch limo (my first!) to go uptown to “perform” for the media during an Opening, and between – a drowsy (just off the plane) Martin Luther King sitting at our kitchen table.
Feliks was never without a sketchbook, taking it all down, recording, bearing witness. I was privileged to sometimes be at his side”.
Teresa Topolski (the artist’s daughter) 2017
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NOTE: Nothing will be sold before the Exhibition opens at 6pm on Thursday 16th November.
The Exhibition continues through 22nd December.
1. Roman Polanski (b.1933) with Sharon Tate (1943-1969) dancing, Beverley Hills ‘… race / wind up Beverley Hills. The house – borrowed and easy glory. Dogs hugest and smallest. Sharon Tate a la Houri. Eva a la garconne. Super-karate instructor from Hong Kong…’ Feliks Topolski, ‘Fourteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Pencil, pen and ink. 1968. 14x16.75 inches. £1250 ●
2. Carnaby Street; Soho in the Sixties. Pencil and wax crayon. Inscribed. Circa 1965. 12x17.75 inches. £1000 ●
3. ‘The Establishment Club, round 2’. The Establishment Club, so-named by founder Peter Cook, was set up for the performance of satirical material intended to test the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship laws. It ran from 1961 to 1964 at 18 Greek Street. Pencil. Inscribed and dated, Jan.1962. 9.25x14 inches. £1000
4. ‘Soledad Campaign and Angela Davis Campaign … Howard Moore, Angela Davis’s lawyer …Penny Jackson, sister of George ’. George Jackson was a Black Panther and one of the three men charged with murdering a Soledad prison guard in 1970. He was shot while trying to escape before his trial. Angela Davis was arrested in relation to the murder of Judge Haley in 1970, but acquitted. Pencil and charcoal. Inscribed. 18x12 inches. £1500
5. ‘Whores for Peace … Cambridge Communist Party’, a London demo seen from the artist’s Whitehall Court apartment, circa 1968 ’… Craftily the Police channel / split / misdirect the marchers, who aim at the rewarding route of Whitehall, into streams weaving by the Embankment, and round my stand: many hours, many miles lasting Peace demo criss-crossed and U-turned on itself over Westminster Bridge, and ‘Whores for Peace’ banner paraded – wasted before nobody-me on my doorstep…’ Lit. and Ill. Feliks Topolski ‘ Fourteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Fibre tip pen and crayon on yellow paper. Inscribed. 12x9 inches. £775 ●
6. ‘H.H. Kabaka of Buganda (King Mutesa II of Buganda), Richard, Buganda, Jane Cliss, Dr Sam Kabali, Kampala’. Major General Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Muteesa II K.B.E. (1924-1969) 35th Kabaka of Buganda (1939-1969) and first President of Uganda (1963-1966). Milton Obote deposed him in 1966 and incorporated Buganda into Uganda. The Kababa lived in exile in Rotherhithe until he died in possibly suspicious circumstances in 1969. His son Prince Omulangira Richard (1956-1992). Pencil. 1961. Signed and inscribed. Ill: Topolski’s Chronicle No.8. vol X. 1962. 14x10 inches £775
7. Defence Charles Garry addressing the Judge at the trial for the first degree murder of Police Officer John Frey by Black Panther Huey Newton, July-September 1968. It was after this trial that Garry helped initiate the model for mixed race juries for politically and racially sensitive trials. Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour. 1968. 14x17 inches. £1250
8. ‘Tom Hayden … This Government, this Convention every bit as controlled as the puppet Government in Saigon’. Tom Hayden (1939-2016) politician, anti-Vietnam War activist and husband of Jane Fonda, with others at the Chicago Democratic Convention, 1968. Pencil, pen, brush and ink. Inscribed. 14x17 inches. £1000
9. ‘First Committee 1492nd Meeting, International co-operation in the peaceful uses of Outer Space report of the Committee etc etc … This Senior Political Committee….’ The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, was adopted by the General Assembly on 27th January 1967 and entered into force on 10th October 1967. Pencil, fibre tip pen, ink and ballpoint pen. Inscribed and dated, 17.12. 1966. 14x20 inches. £1250 ●
10. ‘Musee National d’Art Moderne’, avenue President Wilson, Paris. Pencil, pen and ink. Signed and inscribed. Circa 1955. 14x10 inches. £775
11. Martin Luther King (1929-1968): study for the BBC series ‘Face to Face, (1959-1962) ‘Martin Luther King arrived in London on the morning of his late afternoon programme 29th October,1961), was taken to my house (14 Hanover Terrace), not the studio, went to sleep in Daniel’s bed, had lunch with us – and I drew him on until he was fetched. There was plenty of easily flowing simple talk; however, with such a singular anointed gospeller, it never left his apostolic theme’. Charcoal and watercolour. Drawn on 29th October, 1961. Lit: ‘Fourteen Letters’, Feliks Topolski, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Related ill: ‘Omnibus’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 1-6, vol. XIII,1965. 16x12 fragment. Damaged in a Studio fire. £2250 ●
12. ‘Until all men are free / no-one can be …Ronnie Laing … Stokely Carmichael … The Round House’. Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998) Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee calling for Black Power and the support of a global Pan-African movement and Ronnie Laing (1927-1989) Scottish anti-psychiatry psychiatrist calling for the healing of mental health problems with ‘no locks and no drugs’ together at ‘The Dialectics of Liberation’, the Round House, Camden, 15-30 July, 1967. Pencil, pen and ink. Signed, inscribed and dated, 1967. 14x10 inches. £1000
13. The Arts and Censorship. A Gala Evening at the Festival Hall concerning Depravity and Corruption … Frankie Dymon Jnr … Richard Neville’ (1941-2016) (cf.no.30) 9th December, 1968. Jim Anderson extreme top left ( cf.no.36 ) Dymon (b.1942) was the first black British film director. Pencil, pen and ink. Inscribed. 10x14 inches. £1000
14. ‘Deutsche Democratische (sic) Republik …’ The German Democratic Republic was established in 1949. En route to Poland Topolski and his family arrived by car in Berlin on the morning of 13th August 1961 to find the East Germans barricading checkpoints to the East. A sympathetic West German policeman directed them to an unblocked street and they just got through. The DDR began to build the Berlin Wall on the 15th August. Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour. Inscribed. Ill: ‘East – West’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no.’s 16-21, vol. IX , 1961. Lit: ‘Fourteen Letters’, Feliks Topolski, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. 10x14 inches. £1000 ●
15. Cuba: ‘Chinese General … Soviet delegate … Comendante (sic) Raoul Castro … Fidel Castro’. ‘…The crowds round him…at the celebracion in Plaza de la Revolucion Jose Martin … are dwarfed by Fidel Castro! The length of his speechifying conforms to his extra size- even the Chinese Generals round him (sturdy listeners )…are stunned into submission…I survive them by concentrating on drawing, but I am always amazed at the endurance of the ‘distinguished’ participants around me…’, Feliks Topolski, ‘Fifteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Pencil. Inscribed. Topolski was in Cuba in 1963. 10x14 inches. £1250
16. ‘The Duke of Kent visits Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong in his dressing room’. Pencil. Inscribed. Ill: ‘London International’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 13-14, vol. IV, 1956. 9.5x6.5 inches. £775 ●
17. A Bubble Car, possible a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller KR 200, driven by ‘Elizabeth Russell’. Pencil. Inscribed verso. Ill: ‘London Ladies’, Topolski’s Chronicle’, no.s 11, vol. IX, 1961. 14x10 inches. £775 ●
18.The End of the Evening: Andy Warhol, Ultra Violet and the artist’s daughter Teresa . Pencil, pen and ink. Signed. 1968. ‘… Dash to East 59th street poshness, filled up with ad-administrators: ballooning men and their balloon but laced women – and we, fancy troop of entertainers, walk into it and perform for TV and press cameras ‘release’: Andy, shyly determined, draws with many coloured marker-pens a butterfly on the bared thigh of homely pretty Leigh Taylor-Young – one of the essential moves to solidify her movie stardom…’ Feliks Topolski, ‘Fourteen Letters’, no pagination. Faber and Faber, 1988. 18x12 inches. £2500
19. ‘Graham Green (sic) / Cuba / Bay of Pigs’ Pencil. Signed and inscribed. Graham Greene’s ‘Our Man in Havana’ was published in 1958 and Cuba’s Bay of Pigs was unsuccessfully invaded by CIA backed Cuban exiles on 17th April 1961. Topolski met Greene, who he already knew, in Havana and they visited the Bay of Pigs ‘…a dull and basic resort with attached ‘attractions’, such as a crocodile pool…’ Feliks Topolski, ‘Fourteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. 10x14 fragment. £1000
20. ‘When I looked at you I saw the backbone of America’: possibly a quote from CBS journalist Walter Cronkite (1916-2009). CBS commissioned Topolski to cover the 1952 Presidential race between Eisenhower and Stevenson. It was their first televised Presidential Election. Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour. Inscribed. 14x17 inches. £1500 ●
21. ‘United Nations … Signatories of the International Covenant adopted by the General Assembly on Human Rights, 16.12’, 1966. Secretary General (1961-1971) U Thant (1909-1974) about to sign. Pencil, pen and ink. Inscribed. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16th December 1966 and in force from 23rd March 1976. Inscribed. 12x18 inches. £1250
22. ‘Pierre Boulez’. Pierre Boulez C.B.E. (1925-2016) pioneering French composer and conductor. Charcoal and fibre tip pen. Signed and inscribed. 11.75x8.25 inches. £775 ●
23. Elvis Presley (1935-1977). Pencil. Ill: ‘U.S.A. Teenagers and Elvis Presley’, ‘Topolski’s Chronicle, no.22, vol. IV, 1956. Presley reached No.2 in the UK charts with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in 1956. 12x9 inches. £1750 ●
24. Christopher Logue (1926-2011). Pacifist and Beat Poet known for ‘War Music’, his re-telling of Homer’s Illiad. Pencil, pen and ink. Inscribed. Ill: ‘English Poetry’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 21-24, vol. VIII, 1960. 14x10 inches.£1000 ●
25. ‘Ray Bush, The Vipers, Tony Pitt, The Worried Men and The Saxons’ : a skiffle club, possibly the Skiffle Cellar in Greek Street or the 2i’s Coffee Bar, Old Compton Street, Soho. Pencil, pen and ink. Inscribed. Ill: ‘Ritual before Content’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 1-2. Vol. VI, 1958. 9x11.25 inches. £1000
26. Havana: Havana: ‘Floridita Bar… Hemingway’s ‘Place’. ‘…Floridita of Hemingway legend, where ‘his’ place at the bar is kept honoured…yet…giantly countered by the new presence of the painted backcloth: Fidel (even bigger than in reality) leading his revolutionaries into battle – straight at the bar client’s indifference’. Ill: ‘Cuba’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s.17-20, vol. XI, 1963. Lit: ‘Fourteen Letters’, Feliks Topolski, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Pencil. Signed, inscribed and dated, 1963 10x14 inches. £1500 ●
27. ‘Arnold Wesker (1932-2016), ‘The Kitchen’. Arnold Wesker’s first play ‘The Kitchen’ was written in 1957 and first performed at the Royal Court in 1959 (Single-act production) and 1961 (Two-act production). Pencil, pen and ink. 1959 or 1961. Inscribed. 10x14 inches. £1000
28. ‘Joan Baez’ (b.1941) Folk Singer and Activist. Charcoal. Drawn in Edinburgh in 1965. 20x12.75 fragment. Saved from a Studio fire. £1750 ●
29. John Osborne (1929-1994) Playwright. Charcoal, brush and watercolour. Related ill: ‘English Writers’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 22-24, vol. X, 1962. 20x14 inches. £1000 ●
30. Richard Neville. (1941-2016) Australian Co-founder and editor of ‘Oz’(1963-1969 ) and ‘Ink’ (1971-1072). Charcoal. Drawn at the time of the ‘Oz’ obscenity trial in 1971 at which Topolski was a witness for the defence. 16.5x11.75 inches. £1500 ●
31. Philippe Pierre and Shoe at one of the Artist’s Studio Open Fridays. ‘…Round House Hippy rites I attended often. On one such Teresa and I…spotted, within the whirlwinds of the avidly exultant, a lone poseur, languidly propping his top-to-toe beauty against a pillar. His studied detachment, his glittering ultra-clothing, his dark-accented Raphaelian profile, long-black-hair-adorned – invited (surely his calculation) our advance…He was a Parisian; his name: Philippe… Not a loner at all … He positively commanded the hippy scene in London…’ Feliks Topolski, ‘Fourteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Pencil, fibre tip pen and wax crayon. Circa 1968. 14x20 inches. £975 ●
32. ‘LSO at RFH conducted by Andre Previn – Debussy’s ‘Iberia’. Pencil, fibre tip pen, pastel on blue paper. Signed and inscribed. 1974. 12x18 inches. £1000 ●
33. The wedding of Princess Margaret (1930-2002) to the photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones (1930-2017), Westminster Abbey, 6th May, 1960. Pencil. Signed. 9.75x14.75 inches. £775
34. Bob Dylan (b.1941) Genius. Charcoal. Related ill: ‘Omnibus’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 1-6, Vol. XIII, 1965. Drawn during the second of two 35 minute Bob Dylan Specials recorded by the BBC at their Shepherd’s Bush Studios on 1st June 1965. Topolski was accompanied by his daughter Teresa. 19.75x13.5 inches fragment. Saved from a Studio fire. £1750 ●
35. The Beginning of the Evening: Andy Warhol at The Factory, Union Square. ‘…unexpected shallow empty – a managerial genius amongst mirrors, glass desks, white telephones and pansy adjutants… Ultra Violet arrives and we pack (eleven of us) into a limousine …Andy as if behind a multiple mask yet an innocent…’ Feliks Topolski, ‘Fourteen Letters’, no pagination, Faber and Faber, 1988. Pencil, pen and ink. 1968. 18x12 inches. £2500 ●
36. Jim Anderson (b.1937) Australian editor of ‘Oz’(1963-1969), novelist and artist. Charcoal and pastel. Drawn at the time of the ‘Oz’ obscenity trial in 1971 at which Topolski was a witness for the defence. 16.5x11.75 inches. £1500
37. ‘Arts Lab.’ The Arts Lab (1967-1969) was an alternative and pioneering arts centre run by an American, Jim Haynes, at 182 Drury Lane. Pencil. Inscribed. 10x14 inches. £775
38. London Street Scene. Pencil, fibre tip pen and crayon on grey paper. Circa 1970. 12x18 inches. £1000 ●
39. Gathering of Poets: ‘Hans Magnus Enzensberger … Ted Hughes … Pablo Neruda … Auden…’ A Poetry Evening , at the Struga World Poetry Festival in Macedonia programmed by Clive Farrow and founded in 1961. Pencil. Inscribed. 10x14 inches. £1000 ●
40. ‘Christies, March 17th, 1960 – ‘Thirteen thousand guineas. No more’? Pencil, chalk, pen and ink. Signed, inscribed, and ‘£101,960 the highest total recorded / Louis XV Marquetry table by J F Oeben’. Ill: ‘Antiques and Old Masters’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 13-14, vol. VIII, 1960. 14x20 inches.
41. Felix Dennis (1947-2014) Co-editor of Oz (1963-1969) , publisher and poet . Drawn at the time of the ‘Oz’ obscenity trial in 1971 at which Topolski was a witness for the defence. Charcoal and pastel. 1971 16.5x11.75 inches. £1500
42. ‘Caretaker by Harold Pinter’. Pencil, brush and ink. Inscribed. Related ill: ‘Theatre des Nations’, Topolski’s Chronicle, no’s 12-15, vol. IX, 1961. ‘The Caretaker’ by Harold Pinter was premiered at the Arts Theatre Club on 27th April, 1960, with Donald Pleasence, Harold Pinter as ‘Harry’ and Peter Woodthorpe, and was Pinter’s first commercial success. 10x14.5 inches.£1000 ●