Francis Carr was born Géza Spitzer into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1919. In 1938, due to mounting anti-Semitism, he left Hungary for England, where he enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Postwar, he trained in screenprinting at Bolt Court School, becoming a master of this technique and contributing, with his wife, printmaker Dorothy Carr, to its elevation from a mostly commercial practice into an artistic medium for progressive printmaking.
Artist, designer, printmaker and teacher Francis Carr was born Géza Spitzer into a middle-class, observant Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary in 1919. His father, a solicitor employed by Unilever, wished his son to follow in his footsteps, and despite his interest in art, encouraged him to enrol at Pázmány Péter University, Budapest, to study law. The mounting antisemitism Carr experienced there forced him to leave Hungary and immigrate to England, where he had a cousin who could act as a guarantor.
In 1938 Carr set off for England, travelling via Italy, where a seminal visit to the Giotto frescoes in the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi fuelled his ambition to become a professional artist. In London, he enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (evacuated to Northampton in 1940), studying illustration under the well-known wood engraver John Farleigh, and life drawing under William Roberts and Bernard Meninsky. In 1941 Carr joined the non-combatant Pioneer Corps (until 1943, the only unit accepting alien males wishing to serve their adopted country) and worked briefly in Long Marston in Warwickshire for the Education Corps, setting up educational displays under the celebrated Jewish graphic designer and poster artist, Abram Games. From 1944 to the end of the war, Carr served in the British army, adopting the British version of his name at this time (so that if he fell into German hands, he would be treated as an enemy soldier and not as a traitor), and was subsequently promoted to the rank of sergeant. Postwar, he joined the interpreting corps and went to Spandau, Berlin, where he was attached to the Public Safety department in the British sector before being asked to briefly run an art school for de-mobbed soldiers in Hamburg.
In 1946 Carr returned to England and re-enrolled at the Central School but soon moved to Bolt Court School to learn screenprinting and was taught by Fred MacKenzie, the inventor of Letraset. After mastering the craft, Carr was asked to teach the subject himself to students including, most famously, Eduardo Paolozzi. In 1961 Carr published a textbook entitled A Guide to Screen Process Printing with Vista Books. Prior to this he had been commissioned in 1951 to provide a screenprint illustration for N Douglas' South Wind, published by the Folio Society. As Anna Nyburg has observed, Carr, together with his wife, the printmaker Dorothy Carr, played a crucial role in introducing silk screen printing into England in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a fine art process in its own right. Most importantly, they ‘changed its application from commercial use, by sign writers and display firms, into an artistic medium for imaginative print making’ (Nyburg, ‘How Géza Spitzer became Francis Carr’). Carr’s print After the Storm (1949), the first serigraph to be produced in the UK, was shown at the Arts Council Exhibition The Mechanised Image (1978), and is now part of the British Museum collection. After 11 years at Bolt Court, Carr moved to Ravensbourne School of Art in Kent, where he taught art and design history, alongside fellow refugees Peter Midgeley (né Peter Fleischmann) and Hellmuth Weissenborn.
A versatile and curious artist, Carr explored different techniques and subjects. His oeuvre included plaster sculptures, laser printing, paintings inspired by modern technology, landscape gouaches of Scotland and Wales in bold, vibrant colours, as well as charcoal drawings of the Forest of Dean, and pastel drawings of London and the Thames. Animals were among his favourite subjects, and in 1981 he held an exhibition of animal drawings and gouaches at the Fitzroy Gallery in London. He also designed playgrounds all over Britain, among them an innovative mosaic mural at Holman Hunt Infants’ School (now New King’s School) in London, intended to be touched by the children and to involve all the senses. A photo of Carr putting the finishing touches to the mural was published in the Picture Gallery section of The Times (20 January 1961, p. 7). In 1965 he was appointed Design Consultant to the Greater London Council Housing Division, for whom he carried out several large scale commissions. Carr’s artistic achievements included the organization of the 1967 Artists and Architecture Exhibition at The Building Centre in London, which featured work by Picasso, and was awarded first prize at the competition organised by Pembroke Dock for a design for a sundial and rock area, which were opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 1970. Other design projects included the dust jacket for a Phaidon book on the Windsor Castle collections and the flyer for London Transport advertising the Lord Mayor’s Show. In 2002 the Eckersley Gallery, London College of Communication, University of the Arts, held a comprehensive exhibition of Carr's work, The Creative Screen.
Francis Carr died in London, England in 2013, aged 93. Before his death, he donated much of his archive to Central St Martins (now part of the University of the Arts). His work is represented in UK public collections including the British Museum, where the Department of Prints and Drawings holds an archive of Carr's teaching aids and writings about screenprinting; as well as the V&A and London Transport Museum, among others.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Francis Carr]
Publications related to [Francis Carr] in the Ben Uri Library