Aleksander Werner was born in Brwinów, Poland on September 13, 1920. Arriving in England with the so-called Anders' Army (Polish Second Corps) after the end of the Second World War in 1946, Werner studied at Marian Bohusz-Szyszko's Polish School of Painting and Graphic Design and then at the Sir John Cass School of Art. One of the founding members of Polish exhibiting collective, Grupa 49, Werner primarily worked in woodcut printing and later, with clay and glass sculpture, exhibiting several times in London and internationally, and representing Great Britain in a woodcut exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum (1954–55).
Painter, printmaker and sculptor Aleksander Werner was born into a family with a long artistic lineage (dating back to Joseph Werner, the Swiss seventeenth century painter), in Brwinów, Poland on 13 September 1920. Werner’s father was a graduate of the Kraków Academy of Fine Art who perished in the Polish-Soviet War the year his son was born. Encouraged to practice art, given the family tradition, and even inheriting his father’s brushes and art supplies, Werner became a war artist after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. After escaping from a prisoner of war camp in the northern forests of Russia, Werner eventually made his way to join General Władysław Anders’ Polish Second Corps in the Middle East. Continuing his war artwork with the Second Corps during the Italian Campaign, Werner was one of 36 Polish soldiers and officer-artists of the so-called Anders’ Army who was able to attend the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome in 1945–46 (alongside Ryszard Demel, Leon Piesowocki and others).
After the Second Corps left Italy for Scotland in November 1946, Werner was one among many Polish student artists who were transferred to a Polish Resettlement Camp in Waldingfield, near Sudbury in Suffolk. There, Werner studied at the Polish School of Painting and Graphic Design in exile under the guidance of Professor Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, another Anders’ artist and founder of the school (fellow Polish students in Waldingfield included Demel, Piesowocki, Kazimierz Dźwig, Tadeusz Beutlich and others). At the end of the year, the school moved to Kingwood Common, near Reading, and then later to Bayswater in London. With Anders’ artists uncertain about their future, many sought and received scholarships for further study in British art schools, aided by special funds from the British Interim Treasury Committee for Polish Resettlement. Werner, along with other Anders’ artists such as Demel, Stanisław Frenkiel, and Dźwig, was thus able to continue studying at the Sir John Cass School of Art in 1947. In 1949, Werner was a founding member of Bohusz-Szyszko’s Grupa 49 (Group 49); an association that succeeded the short-lived Young Artists Association (YAA) and comprised of 14 ex-student artists from the Academy in Rome and Bohusz-Szyszko’s school of painting. Interested in a more modern and progressive approach than YAA, for ten years Grupa 49 exhibited the work of Polish artists in various locations, ranging from the Polish YMCA Club to the newly established Grabowski Gallery in South Kensington, founded by fellow Polish immigrant, Mateusz Grabowski. It was also around this time that Werner taught graphic design at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts.
Becoming more established in England, Werner concentrated on painting and graphics, exhibiting his woodcuts in London, Switzerland, Italy, and the USA. In 1954–55 he was chosen to represent Great Britain in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition International Colour Woodcuts. Popular in the 1950s, Werner’s woodcut prints, paintings and collages also illustrated nautical books and dust jackets for other publications. Examples include Seaforth Mackenzie’s Dead Men Rising (1951) and Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis (1961). In 1957, his lino-cut prints were published by the London-based Sylvan Press, founded by Hungarian emigre, Charles Rosner. However, during the early 1960s, turning away from printmaking and toward sculpture, Werner became interested in the media of fired clay and fused glass. The largest solo exhibition of Werner’s work (including 50 pieces made from baked clay) was held at Drian Galleries in London in 1972, organised by fellow Pole, Halima Nałęcz. His 'sensibility' as an artist has been described as tending toward 'abstract expression rather than the figurative Expressionism of the older Poles' (Douglas Hall, Art in Exile, 2008). His public commissions included a monumental aluminium relief for the London offices of CAV Ltd in the later 1960s, a ceramic mural for the headquarters of TESCO in 1971, and a gilded bas-relief in front of a tabernacle in a Manchester church.
In 1996, Werner suffered from a stroke that prevented him from continuing his sculptural work, although he continued to create collages, small paintings and drawings. In a wheelchair, he managed to attend an exhibition of his work at POSK Gallery in 2011, which featured many of his collaged works. Aleksander Werner died in Margate, Kent, England on 11 September 2011, where he lived for the last 30 years of his life. A posthumous retrospective was held at POSK Gallery in 2012. His works are held in the UK public domain in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.