Franciszka Themerson

1907 (Warsaw) – 1988 (London)

Someone described the Themersons — Franciszka and her husband Stefan — as an experimental orchestra of art-forms; her significance is as one half of that unique team, collaborating on films, on publishing, and on the offbeat expression of ideas. They met Lye, Grierson and Moholy-Nagy on a preliminary visit to London, and showed films of Lye’s and Moholy’s back in Warsaw. They moved to Paris (where they met Queneau, whose work they were later to publish), and finally settled in London, where Schwitters — almost unknown in Britain — visited them, and sent Christmas-cards.