Halima Nalecz was born in Antonowo, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire) in 1914, attending Stefan Batory University in Vilnius, where she received her first art classes. Due to the German-Soviet war she fled first to Moscow, Palestine and Lebanon, eventually immigrating to England in 1947, where she embarked on a long lasting and successful career as a gallerist and artist. In 1957 she founded the Drian Galleries in London, where she gave exposure to emerging avante-garde artists and also showed her own work.
Painter and gallerist, Halima Nalecz was born Maria Krzywicz-Nowohonska in 1914 in Antonowo, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire, now Antanavas, Lithuania). Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 her family fled to Jaroslavl, Ukraine (now Russia), but her father died soon after their arrival. In 1924 Nalecz moved to Vilnius, later attending Stefan Batory University, where she received her first art classes from professor Michał Rouby. In 1929 she returned with her mother to Antonowo, now heavily war-damaged and in 1936 she married engineer Stanisław Jastrzębiec-Więckowski. The marriage was short-lived. Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the German invasion of the Soviet Union two years later, he perished in a German POW camp in 1941, the same year in which Nalecz lost her mother. Nalecz herself fled first to Moscow, then reached Haifa in Palestine via Odessa and Turkey, where she joined the YMCA Women's Auxiliary Service, working as a decorator in soldiers’ common rooms and creating stage designs for performances in schools. After demobilization in 1946 she lived in Jerusalem and Lebanon, immigrating to England in 1947 as a European Voluntary Worker (EVW). This category designated displaced people who were admitted into the UK between 1947 and 1950 with the aim of assisting those made homeless during the war, as well as alleviating labour shortages in essential industries. Until 1952 she worked as a labourer in Manchester and London. After marrying her second husband, Zygmunt Nałęcz, she took on the artistic pseudonym ‘Halima’.
In London Nalecz began a long and successful career as a gallerist, contributing with other female émigrés, such as Ala Story and Erica Brausen, to the display and dissemination of contemporary art. Aiming to support emerging artists, and disappointed at the exclusion of modern art from the more traditional Bond Street galleries, in 1956 Nalecz co-founded, with fellow artists Denis Bowen and Frank Avray Wilson, the New Vision Centre Gallery in Marble Arch, central London. In 1957 she opened her own space, Drian (abbreviation of Piet Mondrian's surname) Galleries in Porchester Place, W2, where she promoted avant-garde painters, sculptors and graphic designers from all over the world, many of whom established significant reputations and whose works became highly collectible. Among notable artists whose careers she kickstarted were British painters John Bellany and William Crozier, who each held their first major exhibitions with Nalecz. Other featured artists included Douglas Portway, Michael Sandle and Yaacov Agam, as well as a number of her fellow Poles.
Alongside her gallerist career, Nalecz continued to paint, often showcasing her own work at Drian. In the 1950s she frequently visited Paris, where she first came into contact with abstract art, training in the studio of Henri Closon, member of La Nouvelle École de Paris, and collaborating with gallerist Denise René. Her later work, bursting with dynamism and energy, revealed her fascination with European abstract expressionism. Her abstract paintings of nature displayed a ‘strong sense of design, rich colours and feeling for unspoilt nature’ (Burlington Magazine 1972, n.p.). Nalecz was also stimulated by the School of Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, a fellow Polish refugee whose influence became ‘superimposed’ on her earlier training with Rouby. Nalecz later declared: ‘it took me as many as 30 years to create my own style’ (artist’s website). Polish émigré painter, Stanislaw Frenkiel, commenting on her art, observed: ‘Nalecz changed her style a few times. She started as an abstract painter, then she returned to figurative art. However, one thing remained always unchanged — her remarkable sensitivity to colour and the ability to arrange composition according to the absolutely finest rules of decorative painting’ (Nalecz website). Nalecz exhibited several times at the Royal Academy of Arts and at Ben Uri in the 1960s. Furthermore, she had a significant role as a collector: having a rule that for every single painting she sold, she would buy another to add to Drian's permanent collection. By 1983 she had accumulated nearly 600 paintings, which she eventually donated to the National Museums in her native Poland, including 80 of her own.
Halima Nalecz died in London, England in 2008. On 7 September 2021, Westminster City Council installed a Green Plaque in honour of her life and legacy at 5 Porchester Place. To celebrate this, the exhibition Kaleidoscope: A Celebration of Colour was held nearby at 14 Porchester Place, in a modern-day re-creation of the Drian Galleries The show, curated by art critic and her friend, Robin Dutt, was conceived in the spirit of Nalecz, who once stated that she believed ‘in the medicine of colours’ (Guardian obituary) and featured works by contemporary artists, all characterised by a powerful use of colour. Simultaneously, the exhibition Halima Nalecz & Her Artists, featuring works by Nalecz, Yaacov Agam, Denis Bowen, Franciszka Themerson, Feliks Topolski and Marek Zulawski, was held at POSK Gallery in Hammersmith, west London. Halima Nalecz' work is represented in the UK public domain in the POSK Collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Halima Nalecz]
Publications related to [Halima Nalecz] in the Ben Uri Library