Word: topolski
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Born in Warsaw in 1907, plump, humorous, brown-eyed Feliks Topolski studied at Warsaw's Academy of Art, decorated
...military service in a Polish Cavalry Regiment designed his own uniform of pure white with gold braid and buttons. One night, while a guest in one of his self-decorated nightclubs, he was approached by a captain who had been instructed by a major at another table to ask Topolski what uniform he was wearing. Answered Topolski: "My own." The major was amused and ordered Topolski to take it off. But the captain whispered that Topolski would not be court-martialed if he did not. Says Topolski: "I didn...
...Polish magazine commissioned Topolski to draw the ceremonies of King George V's Silver Jubilee. Topolski was so fascinated by such English institutions as pubs, the Derby and the Eton & Harrow cricket match that he stayed on, published a book of satirical drawings appreciatively lampooning Britain's pomps and humors. With the enthusiastic support of famed British Painter Augustus Edwin John, London's ultra-conservative Victoria & Albert Museum purchased three Topolski drawings. Only one member of the Museum's committee objected-on the ground that they were the work of a too young foreigner. The committeeman...
Bernard Shaw, who commissioned Topolski to illustrate three of his plays, remarked that Topolski "succeeds so admirably at what Picasso tries to do. When Feliks draws something it looks awkward until it is finished-when Picasso draws something it looks awkward after it is finished...
When the Nazis bombed England, Topolski "wandered about gaping, secure in a curious self-imagined sense of being only a spectator behind the footlights. . . ." While he was sketching a Wren church in the middle of a night blitz, a huge bomb blew the church away, hurled Topolski to the ground. He was five weeks in the hospital. Says he: "I was still trying not to miss anything of the show...