Francis Carr BA FRSA (1919 - )

Family and friends of the south London-based artist Francis Carr, as well as the artist himself, gathered at the department of Humanities at Imperial College London on the afternoon of 20 October 2011 to hear "How Geza Spitzer became Francis Carr: from Hungarian Student to British artist" a lecture given by Dr Anna Nyburg, whose research interests cover cultural transfer by refugees from Nazi Germany.

Carr was born into a middle class Jewish family – his father was a lawyer – but he decided to become an artist at the age of three. He nevertheless initially studied at law school, but the barrage of anti-Semitism he faced as a young man in the late 1930s impelled him to leave for England, where a relative stood surety for him. A spell at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London was interrupted by World War Two service in the Pioneer Corps alongside many others of "the King's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens", who took especial risks fighting for the Allied cause because, if captured by the Germans, they would have been executed as traitors rather than being detained as prisoners of war. It was for this reason that Carr adopted his English-sounding name – the surname he took was that of his wife Dorothy Carr. Later he taught at the London College of Printing, at Bolt Court, developing the technique of screen printing from a commercial printing process to a fine art – his book on the subject was published by Studio Vista in 1961 – and we show here one of his prints from that period.

The work of which Carr is most proud is his 1961 mosaic "Magic Garden" at the New Kings School, New Kings Road, S.W.6, which has recently been restored with the help of the Twentieth Century Society and the Heritage of London Trust (mixed media, incorporating a large number of screen-printed tiles made by Carr himself). Other similar works which Carr created for schools no longer exist. Carr never wished to be tied down to one artistic discipline and he aimed to be a jack-of-all- trades, able, by virtue of what would now be seen as a very traditional art training, to turn his hand to any commission. His other work has included sculpture and the design of a maze in Kazakhstan. He deplores the lack of sensory experience in computer- based art. The last twenty years have seen Carr's interests turn toward the environment – resulting in the foundation of the charity the Landscape & Arts Network in 1993 (the Editor is a member of the L&AN's Advisory Board).

www.1st-uk-screen-prints.com

www.landartnet.org

Francis Carr, 31 Bus, screen print 1960, 25 x 33 cm (British Museum collection)

The artist and "Magic Garden", mosaic 1961 (detail)(Twentieth Century Society)