Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Andrzej Kuhn artist

Andrzej Kuhn was born in Lwów, Poland in 1929. He arrived in England with his family as a refugee in 1947 and later trained at the Chelsea School of Art. Often associated with 'naive art', Kuhn's paintings and sculptures were inspired by his life experiences, Polish heritage and folk art, and were exhibited regularly at Centaur Gallery and Goldmark Gallery.

Born: 1929 Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine)

Died: 2014 Lincolnshire, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1947


Biography

Painter and sculptor Andrzej Kuhn was born in Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1929. When the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1940, his father was interned as an enemy of the state, and Kuhn, his mother and sister were deported to Kazakhstan. Attempting to escape unsuccessfully, his mother was sentenced to ten years hard labour in a prison camp where she ultimately perished. Kuhn and his sister were then placed in an orphanage, after which they were miraculously reunited with their father who had been released. The family then spent several years in refugee camps in Iran, Palestine and Egypt, experiences of which inspired much of Kuhn’s art throughout his life. As a child in exile, art was ‘something to look at in times of trouble’ (Goldmark, 2009). The family eventually arrived in England in 1947.

Kuhn spent his first six years in England as a manual labourer at sea with the Merchant Navy. He wanted to study art but lacked the necessary connections and the knowledge of where to go. In the mid-1950s, as a factory worker living in south London, he decided to approach nearby Battersea Polytechnic with only a few black and white drawings in hand, and he subsequently won a scholarship to the Chelsea School of Art when he was 24. His artistic inspirations were as varied as the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Sumerian Sculpture, and postage stamps from Tanna-Tuva. He married fellow art student Diana, and in 1962 they moved to Freiston Shore, Lincolnshire to a coastguard’s hut that was more affordable than properties in London. Isolated amidst a flat landscape overlooking the salt-marshes of the Wash, over the years their garden was filled with Kuhn’s sculptures made from carved timber and found wood, strung with beads and armoured in empty shotgun shells. Accepting intrigued visitors, the couple attempted to create a magical, mystical and serene home, encapsulated in its name, ‘Atlantis’. Buying a boat, Kuhn regularly sailed down the estuary, as the sea offered him creative inspiration. His studio was near the sea and he often showed his work in nearby Boston.

In the early 1960s, Polish gallerist Jan Wieliczko took a particular interest in Kuhn’s work, and from then on Kuhn’s paintings were shown regularly at Wieliczko’s Centaur Gallery, first on Portobello Road in west London and then in Highgate. Centaur displayed its artworks unconventionally in a jumbled array, with each work competing for attention. This unusual presentation reflected Kuhn’s own artistic practice, as well as his somewhat bohemian home life in Lincolnshire. Wieliczko saw in Kuhn something unique and different to the more fashionable artists of the time. Kuhn’s sculptural work also consciously took inspiration from his Polish roots, both from folk art, and from his grandfather who was a primitive carver, while his flat, mythical painted scenes, full of bright colours and subtle texture, led to him often being described as a naïve artist. This view, however, is challenged by his prior formal training, usually lacked by so-called 'primitive' artists.

In addition to many shows at the Centaur Gallery throughout his career, Kuhn’s works were shown at London’s Drian Galleries (established by fellow Polish exile, Halina Nałęcz) and the Rowan Gallery (1970). Remaining close to his Polish heritage, he showed regularly with the Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA). He also developed a close relationship with Goldmark Gallery in Uppingham, Rutland, holding solo exhibitions there in 1994, 2004, and 2009. Jay Goldmark, photographer and later Managing Director of Goldmark, took a series of photographs of Kuhn in his home and garden at ‘Atlantis’ in 2009, reproducing them in Andrzej Kuhn at Eighty, a publication accompanying an exhibition of the same name held at the gallery the same year. In Kuhn's catalogue essay (originally published in 1961), he explains that ‘To me painting is like a journey into an known world. With my paint brushes ready at hand I travel in my minds to forgotten lands, lost deep in the obscure corners of memory, and penetrate to undiscovered islands of emotion’ (Goldmark, 2009). Andrzej Kuhn died in Freiston Shore, Lincolnshire, England in 2014, having sold over 1,000 paintings to interested, loyal, and often local buyers (including a Lincolnshire farmer). His works can be found in many UK public collections, including Graves Gallery (Museums Sheffield) and the Ruth Borchard Collection.

Related books

  • Polish art in exile in Matthew Bateson's London Collection (Warsaw: Studia I Materialy, 2020)
  • From Adler to Zulawski: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain (London: BURU, 2020), p. 70
  • Jay Goldmark and Andrzej Kuhn, Andrzej Kuhn at Eighty (Uppingham: Goldmark Gallery, 2009)
  • David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945 (Bristol: Art Dictionaries, part of Sansom & Company, 2007)
  • Glyn Hughes, Andrzej Kuhn (Uppingham: Goldmark Gallery, 1994)
  • 'A Sedimental Journey', New Scientist, Vol. 56, No. 818, 2 Nov 1972, p. 292
  • Andrzej Kuhn, 'A Painter on Imagination', The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 1, Iss. 4, 1961, pp. 238-239.

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain, APA (Member)
  • Chelsea School of Art (student) (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Halina Nałęcz & Her Artists, POSK Gallery, London (2021)
  • Art Out of the Bloodlands
  • A Century of Polish Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2017)
  • Pole Position, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield (2014)
  • Andrzej Kuhn at Eighty, Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham (2009)
  • Andrzej Kuhn: Recent Paintings, Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham (2004)
  • Andrzej Kuhn, Polish Cultural Institute, London (1999)
  • Andrzej Kuhn, Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham (1994)
  • Andrzej Kuhn: Exhibition of Paintings, Centaur Gallery, London (1989)
  • Andrzej Kuhn, Sculpture and Small Paintings, Centaur Gallery, London (1984)
  • The Magic World of Andrzej Kuhn: Paintings, Civic Offices, Milton Keynes (1980)
  • Andrzej Kuhn, Drian Galleries, London (1970)
  • Andrzej Kuhn and James Pearson, Rowan Gallery, London (1970)
  • Andrzej Kuhn: Paintings, Centaur Gallery, London (1964)
  • Andrzej Kuhn, Centaur Gallery, London (1961)
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Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Andrzej Kuhn]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Andrzej Kuhn] in the Ben Uri Library