Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1902 Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)

Died: 1972 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Rosner Károly, Karl Rosner

Biography

Art critic, curator and publisher Charles Rosner (Károly Rosner) was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungary in 1902. He was educated in the state schools of Budapest, afterwards rising quickly to become a prominent art critic specialising in woodcuts and commercial art. He was appointed editor of Magyar Grafika (Hungarian Graphic Art) in 1927, a role he held for three years until the magazine’s demise. In 1932 he began work as the Hungarian correspondent of The Studio, establishing a regular commute between Budapest and London, which established him as a celebrated advocate of Hungarian art abroad; through his articles, he also familiarised his audience with both acclaimed and lesser-known contemporary Hungarian artists. He also curated at least three exhibitions on Hungarian graphic art abroad including a part of the 1933 Milan Triennale, a display at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 1937, and a further display at the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague in the Spring of 1938.

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Rosner fled to England, arriving with an established reputation as a critic and settling in north-west London. He took charge of the London-based publishing house Sylvan Press, assisting fellow émigrés by offering them job opportunities in the fields of illustration and publishing. One of the most talented was the Hungarian-born artist Val Biro, who began at the Press as a studio assistant and progressed to book jacket designer. At that time, the Press focused on war books including C. H. Ward-Jackson's No Bombs at All and Endre Havas' Poems during Flight (both illustrated by Biro), but also produced art books and children's novels in English, Hungarian and French. Despite the shortage of paper and other essential materials during the war, Rosner maintained his publishing output, including his own book, The Writing on the Wall (1943), in which he compared Napoleon's efforts to conquer Britain and Russia to Hitler's plans for world domination, using texts from 1805 and Churchill's early speeches, accompanied by images from the Bodleian Library. In 1941, in the wake of mass internment and through a friendship with the former internee, Austrian artist, Hugo Dachinger, he attempted to publish the internment diary of Austrian emigre, Wilhelm Hollitscher, with illustrations by Dachinger, but the project eventually foundered. After the Second World War, Rosner maintained links with his homeland through contact with prominent Hungarian artists including János Kmetty and Paul C. Molnar, helping them import their works to England for private collections or exhibitions. In 1943, he was asked to curate an exhibition celebrating the opening of the Hungarian Club's new venue at 33 Pembridge Gardens, London. The display centred on graphic art, bringing together fifteen Hungarian émigré artists, residents in the UK at the time, including Biro, draughtsman Joseph Bato, painters Jean Georges Simon and George Mayer-Marton, sculptor Henry Ripszam, and children's book illustrator Klara Biller, whom Rosner had known since his years in Budapest, alongside other internationally acclaimed painters and draughtsmen.

Moderately left-wing, Rosner was a member of the Hungarian Club and was also elected member of the Reform Club in Pall Mall in 1948 (he was naturalised as a British citizen in 1947). From the 1950s, while still connected to the Hungarian artistic community, Rosner's focus widened to encompass international graphic art and commercial design. He was co-editor of Modern Publicity the annual of advertising art and later to Graphis and instigated the first International Book Jacket exhibition, held in the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1949. For the Festival of Britain in 1951, Rosner edited the book entitled Printer's Progress 1851–1951 (published by Sylvan Press), which surveyed a century of development in British printing techniques. In 1961 he edited the centenary publication of the British society publication, Queen magazine, entitled The Frontiers of Privilege. In his late years, Rosner and his wife, Stella, lived at their home in his St John's Wood, north London, where he died in 1972. Recently, Rosner's career and contribution to the Hungarian émigré art scene in London has been re-examined by Robert Waterhouse in his survey Their Safe Haven: Hungarian artists in Britain from the 1930s (2019), accompanied by a (postponed) exhibition at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate.

Related books

Rachel Dickson, 'Portrait of a Man: William Hollitscher and Hugo Dachinger. Just as I am and not as I appear to the World' in Ines Newman ed., Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire (Elstree: Vallentine Mitchell, 2020)
Robert Waterhouse, Their Safe Haven: Hungarian Artists in Britain From the 1930s (Manchester: Baquis Press, 2019)
Charles Rosner, The Growth of the Book Jacket (London: Sylvan Press, 1954)
Charles Rosner, Printer's Progress, 1851–1951 (London: Sylvan Press/Harvard University Press, 1951)
Charles Rosner, The Art of the Book-Jacket (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1949)
Charles Rosner and Jenő Kopp, Introduction to Hungarian Painting (London: Sylvan Press, 1948)
Charles Rosner, The Writing on the Wall 1813–1943 (London: Sylvan Press/Nicholson & Watson, 1943)
Charles Rosner, Hungarian Photography (London and Budapest: Officina, 1939)
Charles Rosner, Art of the Hungarian Book (Leipzig: Verlagsabteilung des Deutschen Buchgewerbevereins, 1938)
Charles Rosner, Hungarian Graphic Art (London and Budapest: Officina, 1938)
Charles Rosner, 'The Art of Hungary', The Studio, Vol. XLIV, March 1937, pp. 115-143
Charles Rosner, 30 Original Woodcuts to Cyrano de Bergerac by Paul C. Molnar (Budapest, 1935)
George Buday, Book of Ballads. Original Woodcuts. Introductory notes by Charles Rosner (Szeged, 1934)
Charles Rosner, A plakát kézikönyve [The Handbook of Posters] (Budapest, 1934)
Charles Rosner, 'Modern Painting in Hungary' The Studio, Vol. XXXIX, June 1932, pp. 314-327

Related organisations

Magyar Grafika (editor)
Sylvan Press (director)
The Studio (correspondent)
Modern Publicity (joint-editor)
Graphis (joint-editor)
Reform Club (member)
Hungarian Club (member)

Selected exhibitions

International Book Jacket Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1949)
Exhibition of Hungarian Graphic Art, Hungarian Club, London (April 1943)
Exhibition of Hungarian Prints, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague (March 1938)
Hungarian Graphic Art Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1937)
Hungarian poster, book and advertisment section of the Milan Triennale (1933)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Charles Rosner]