Katerina Wilczynski was born into a Jewish family in Posen, Germany (now Poznań, Poland) in 1894 and studied art in Leipzig and Berlin, then worked as an illustrator in Berlin, Paris and Rome throughout the 1920s. She remained in Rome until 1938 when the new racial laws in Italy stripping many Jews of their rights precipitated her departure, and in 1939, she fled to England, settling in London. During the Second World War she documented the bomb damage in London and executed portraits of her contemporaries; post-war she continued to work as a painter and book illustrator and regularly exhibited at galleries including Ben Uri and Roland, Browse & Delbanco.
Graphic artist Katerina Wilczynski was born into a Jewish family in Posen, Germany (now Poznań, Poland) on 7 July 1894. She spent much of her early life in Berlin, then studied at the Leipzig Academy for Graphic Arts (1916–17) and at the Berlin School for Arts and Crafts and the Academy of Fine Arts, Berlin (1918). Throughout the 1920s she worked as a poster designer and an illustrator, contributing to publications including the satirical Berlin magazine ULK, before moving to Paris. In 1930, she travelled to the Italian capital on a Prix de Rome scholarship, where her work included many drawings of the city's churches and monuments, establishing architecture as her principal motif. She remained in Rome until 1938 when the new racial laws in Italy stripping many Jews of their rights precipitated her departure, and in 1939, she moved to England, settling in London.
During the Second World War Wilczynski was authorised to document the damage to London during the Blitz in the capacity of an unofficial war artist and a number of the resulting works were included in the National Gallery’s rolling exhibitions of war art, organised by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) under Director Kenneth Clark. At least one of these works was purchased by the WAAC (and examples are held by the Imperial War Museum and the V&A). A commissioned group of portraits of writers, including Camus, Sartre, T.S. Eliot and Herbert Read, for a proposed book ‘European Portraits’, was never published but copies are extant in the Bibliotèque Nationale and National Portrait Gallery. She also executed sensitive portraits of her contemporaries including the politician and writer Francis Aungier Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1942) and novelist Joyce Cary (1954), both in the National Portrait Gallery, as well as Lord David Cecil (1942), Dr John Johnson (1942) and the psychologist Dr Gerhard Adler (1942) - who had been briefly married to German-Jewish émigrée designer Dodo - all in the Ashmolean Museum, as well as the poet Louis McNeice (unknown date and location). She always signed her work ‘WILC’. In 1942 exhibitions of her work were held at both the Berkeley Galleries, London and Somerville College, Oxford.
Postwar Wilczynski exhibited in group exhibitions, including in a Jewish context at the Ben Uri Gallery in London (1944, 1945, 1946 and 1949). She also travelled extensively within Southern Europe, particularly to Spain and Italy. Her book on Rome was published in 1946 and her mediterranean landscapes were exhibited in the same year, followed by a second show in 1949, at the émigré run Roland, Browse & Delbanco Galleries. The introduction to the 1946 exhibition catalogue pointed out that ‘the attraction which Mediterranean life and art [had] for her is reflected in her drawings, in the lucidity of their line [and] the sound balance of their structure’. She maintained wide connections within the émigré network and was a friend of the Polish-Jewish émigré publisher Bruno Cassirer (1872-1941), who had settled in Oxford, and his family, and Cassirer published her 1946 Daphnis and Chloe and distributed copies in England of her 1949 publication Katerina Wilczynski, An artist's Diary in Pictures: Pen and Ink Drawings of a Continental Journey. In 1955 she had an exhibition at the Hanover Gallery (established seven years earlier by German-Jewish émigrée Erica Brausen). Wilczynski's Grecian landscapes: Skiathos (1955), Zakoros (Crete) (1961), and two of Delphi (1965 and 1968, all now in the Government Art Collection), exemplify her loosely rendered landscape style, partly inspired by Greek mythology. As one reviewer noted, 'Miss Wilczynski tries to bring the spirit of Greek mythology to life; the transparent forms of helmeted warriors half emerge and half merge into the ruined masonry' (Roberts 1970, p. 324). In 1970 an exhibition of her portraits and landscapes, Greece Remembered, was held at the Ansdell Gallery in London. She also illustrated many books, among them, a collection of her Greek illustrations published under the title Homage to Greece by Macmillan (1964).
Katerina Wilczynski died in London, England on 12 November 1978. Her work is represented in UK collections including the Ashmolean Museum, the Ben Uri Collection, the Government Art Collection, the National Portrait Gallery, and the V&A, and in public collections in Dresden and Cologne. A photocopy of the typescript of her autobiographical notes held by the Imperial War Museum, is also held at the Warburg Institute Library. A memorial exhibition was held at the New Art Centre, Chelsea (1980) and a retrospective at the John Denham Gallery (1998).
Katerina Wilczynski in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Katerina Wilczynski]
Publications related to [Katerina Wilczynski] in the Ben Uri Library