Franciszka Themerson

Themerson was born in Warsaw in 1907, the daughter of the artist Jakub Weinles and pianist Łucja (née Kaufman). Weinles' family was Jewish. She had older sister, the illustrator and pianist Maryla Weinles-Chaykin (1900–1942). She graduated from the Chopin University of Music and the Warsaw School of Fine Arts with a distinction in 1931. Also in 1931, she married the photographer and writer, Stefan Themerson.

From 1938 to 1940 she lived in Paris, and then from 1940 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 and graphic design.

Themerson collaborated with her husband, the writer Stefan Themerson, on experimental films: Apteka [The Pharmacy] (1930), Europa (1931–1932), Drobiazg Melodyjny [Musical Moment] (1933), Zwarcie [Short Circuit] (1935) and Przygoda Czlowieka Poczciwego [Adventure of a Good Citizen] (1937). Only the last of these survives, along with two films they made together in Britain. Calling Mr. Smith (1943) is an account of Nazi atrocities in Poland, and The Eye and the Ear (1944–45) investigates the visualisation of music. In 1983 Stefan, now living in London, made a reconstruction of Europa with the London Film-Makers' Co-op. An incomplete copy of the original film was found in an archive in Berlin in 2019. Following restitution to the Themerson Estate, it was donated to the British Film Institute for conservation and preservation.

She illustrated books for children written by her husband and others, and in 1948 she founded with her husband the quirky publishing company Gaberbocchus Press, of which she was the art director. The press was named after a Latinisation of 'Jabberwocky', the nonsense poem from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland whose name was coined by Carroll's uncle Hassard Dodgson. In 31 years the Gaberbocchus Press published over sixty titles, including works by Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters, Bertrand Russell and the Themersons themselves. Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi was its flagship publication, published in many editions and still in print. The Gaberbocchus edition is an apposite evocation of the spirit of Jarry's grotesque fable. The text, which was hand-written directly onto lithographic plates by the translator, Barbara Wright – interspersed with Themerson's conté crayon illustrations – is printed on bright yellow pages. Themerson's contributions as illustrator enormously enhanced the graphic originality of the design of Gaberbocchus books. Apart from appearing in many journals worldwide, several collections of her drawings have been published as books: Forty Drawings for Friends, London 1940-42 (1943), The Way It Walks (1954), Traces of Living (1969) and Music (1998).

Themerson's theatrical designs included marionette productions of Ubu Roi, Ubu Enchainé and Brecht's Threepenny Opera, mostly made for the Marionetteater in Stockholm, in the 1960s, which toured worldwide for decades, to international acclaim. Many of them were subsequently exhibited at London's National Theatre in 1993.

Her major solo exhibitions of paintings and drawings include those at Gallery One One One in 1957 and 1959; Drian Galleries, 1963; Zachęta, Warsaw, 1964; New Gallery, Belfast, 1966; Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, 1968; A retrospective at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1975; Gruenebaum, New York City, 1978; Łódź, Warsaw, Wrocław, 1981–1982; Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum, Aalborg, 1991; Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex, 1992; Gdańsk, 1993; Redfern Gallery, 1993; National Theatre, 1993; Royal Festival Hall, 1993. Unposted Letters, Imperial War Museum in 1996; Kordegarda, Warsaw, 1998; Art First, London, 1999 and 2001; CK Zamek, Poznań, 2004; Europe House, London, 2013; GV Art Gallery, London 2013; Museum of Art in Łódź, 2013.

A collection of Themerson's greeting cards, called Gaberbocchus some of the old favourites is in the collection of the National Library of Poland.

Themerson died in 1988, in London, England.