Basil Rakoczi was born to an English mother and Hungarian father in Chelsea, London in 1908 and attended Brighton School of Art followed by the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1935 he co-founded the White Stag Group in London for the advancement of subjectivity in art and psychological analysis. As pacifist, in 1939 Rakoczi settled in Ireland to avoid conscription, quickly establishing himself in the local art scene and regularly exhibiting his paintings alongside other members of the White Stag Group.
Painter Basil Rakoczi was born in Chelsea, England in 1908, the son of an English mother of Irish descent and Hungarian immigrant father. He was christened Benjamin Dobby Wilce, but later took the surname of his stepfather, Rev. Harold Ernst Beaumont, and was therefore known throughout his childhood and early adulthood as Benjamin (Benny) Beaumont. Following the outbreak of the First World War the Beaumonts moved from city to city, first to Golders Green, north London; then Brighton, where Rakoczi was educated at the Jesuit College of St Francis Xavier and Brighton School of Art; and finally to Worthing in East Sussex. However, the marriage was deteriorating and both parents became increasingly dependant on alcohol.
In 1925 Rakoczi moved to Paris where he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In the late 1920s he worked for a time in London as a commercial artist and stage designer but soon turned his attention to painting and psychology. During the 1930s he travelled widely in Europe, Egypt and India. 1932 Rakoczi set up a studio on Fitzroy Street, continuing to focus on his studies in art and psychology. In 1935 with his friend Herbrand Ingouville-Williams, he established the Society for Creative Psychology, with the aim of creating a methodology in psychology attuned to what they called 'the natural rhythm of life' (Rakoczi official website). The activities of the Society consisted mainly in discussions and sessions devoted to group therapy and psychoanalysis, but members often gave talks on a specific subjects. In 1935 Rakoczi met Kenneth Hall, an impoverished artist who remained his closest friend until Hall's premature death in 1946. Rakoczi and Hall worked closely together, drawing inspiration from one another, and they shared a number of exhibitions at the Fitzroy Street studio. In 1935 the pair founded the White Stag Group for the advancement of subjectivity in art and psychological analysis. In 1938, Rakoczi adopted his father's surname (although he knew him only through his mother's reminiscences) and took the full name Basil Ivan Rákóczi, by which he was known thereafter. In the late 1930s Rakoczi met the art dealer Lucy Carrington Wertheim who was running a gallery in The Albany in central London, specialising in the work of young contemporary artists and who took an interest in his work. The pair remained in correspondence until Wertheim's death.
In 1939 Rakoczi, Hall and Ingouville-Williams moved to Ireland. As pacifists, all three wanted to avoid conscription into the army, and neutral Ireland offered a place of refuge while also being within easy reach of mainland Britain. In 1940 Rakoczi showed with the Royal Society of British Artists in London. In the same year the friends settled in Dublin where they quickly established themselves in the local art scene. They championed modernism and exhibited their paintings under the name of the White Stag Group. During his six years in Ireland Rakoczi also worked as an psychoanalyst. From 1940 Rakoczi, Hall and the White Stag Group exhibited regularly at 6 Lower Baggot Street. In 1940 The Irish Times singled out Rakoczi’s Dublin Alley: ‘[…] Every inch of this canvas is of interest, and, as a whole, it is replete with artistic feeling’ (Irish Times 1940, p. 6). The turning point for the White Stag Group was the 1944 Exhibition of Subjective Art, which helped to promote those artists who were interested in creating a genuine Irish avant-garde. In Subjective Art, which shared much with the theoretical base of Surrealism, ‘order and emotion are synthesized [...] but the theme, instead of being drawn from objects in the external world, is elaborated by the workings of the imagination turned inwards upon the memories, dreams and phantasies of the Unconscious. Objects which appear in Subjective paintings, such as a bird, a fish, a figure, or a garden, are not represented in a realistic manner, but as dream-images, as conceptual memories, as the eidetic phantasies of the child-mind’ (Ingouville-Williams, introduction to Three Painters, np). With the subsequent publication a year later of the book Three Painters, which featured the work of Rákóczi, Hall and Patrick Scott, the White Stag Group reached an ever wider audience. After the Second World War, Rakoczi settled again in Paris, and in 1947 he studied briefly with the influential émigré sculptor Ossip Zadkine (1890-1967), working in stone and wood. Rakoczi continued to exhibit in Dublin until the 1950s. His paintings were also shown in France, the Netherlands, and other European countries. In London, Rakoczki exhibited at the AIA Gallery, Molton Gallery (established by émigré, Annely Juda (1914 – 2006)) and the Archer Gallery.
Basil Rakoczi died in London, England in 1979. Although a number of solo exhibitions were held posthumously, the importance of Rakoczi and the White Stag Group had been largely overlooked in Irish art history until the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition dedicated to the White Stag Group in 2005. Rakoczi's work is represented in UK public collections including the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, Ulster Museum, and Salford Museum, among others.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Basil Rakoczi]
Publications related to [Basil Rakoczi] in the Ben Uri Library