Franciszka Themerson

On 10th December 1896 the Theatre de l’Oeuvre in Paris staged the debut performance of a play that stunned and outraged the audience but kicked down the door to Modernism, the movement that transformed 20th-Century culture. Ubu Roi by playwright Alfred Jarry was banned immediately after that first performance.

Themerson has subsequently spent most of her artistic mid-life immersed in an obsession with Ubu Roi. In 1948, impassioned by the seminal cultural importance of Jarry’s play, she and her husband and lifelong collaborator Stefan, published the first ever English translation of Ubu Roi on Gaberbocchus Press.

This exhibition catalogue takes us back to the dawn of Modernism and the play that paved the way for Dadaism, Surrealism and the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’.

Published on the occasion of Franciszka Themerson UBU at Richard Saltoun Gallery (21 July - 15 September 2017).

Texts:

Jasia Reichardt, Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry; Franciszka Themerson (1907-88) and Ubu Roi, 2017.