Topolski's Paris

Topolski sketched numerous pen and ink studies of Parisian street life and cafe society during the late 1930s, producing over 200 drawings by the end of 1938. Something approaching one half of these trenchantly-drawn "snapshots" of Parisian life were destined for publication in 1939 as Paris Scenes and Secrets, but were stranded in Topolski's native Warsaw at the outbreak of war. The story of how they were seized by the Germans and disappeared in the turmoil of war and its aftermath, only to be restored unexpectedly to the artist in the 1960s, is recounted in the introduction by Jonathan Stone to Paris Lost, the illustrated volume in which selected works from the series were eventually published in 1973.  In his autobiography, Fourteen Letters, Topolski lists some of the venues where before the war he had observed and recorded Parisian society, both high and low: the Rue St-Denis, Le Concert Mayol, Le Bal Tabarin, Le Casino de Paris, Les Halles, la Place de la Bastille, Le Café du Dôme, La Coupole, the Hôtel George V, Le Café de la Paix, Chez Nina, Le Lapin Agile... 

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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

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• Feliks Topolski, Fourteen Letters. London, Faber & Faber, 1988.

• Feliks Topolski, Paris Lost: A Sketchbook of the Thirties, with an introduction by Jonathan Stone. London: Hutchinson, 1973.