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Sigmund Pollitzer
Sigmund Pollitzer was seemingly able to live a comfortable artistic life with the help of a private income from the family transport and exhibition firm of Beck and Pollitzer, run by his brother Edward.[1] Born in London in 1913 he was educated at Eton and later in Switzerland. In 1930 aged 17 he went to Germany to study the language, art and architecture. He recalls “quite vividly the exhibitions around 1930. Paul Klee - it was, I believe, his first big exhibition; Feininger, Beckmann, Naum Gabo and also Gropius. They all made a terrific impact on me. I was delighted to be alive at that moment and to be a witness of the scene” [2]. Later that year he returned to England and became an architectural draughtsman, for the architect and designer Oliver Bernard “He was an unconventional man in his life as much as in his work. He took me on as his non-paying pupil, installed me at a drawing-board in his own office amongst the steel girders of the fast-rising Cumberland Hotel”. [3] Pollitzer joined Pilkington glass in 1932 and between 1933 and 1938, was their chief designer. One of his most important commissions being the etched glass panels depicting the “History of Transportation” for the ocean liner Queen Mary in 1936[4]. In 1937 he worked on the Paris ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques clans la Vie Moderne’ and on the ‘Glass Train”, a touring publicity project with various carriages fitted with a range of decorative glass. In 1938 he designed for the Mauretania and again in that year he worked on the Glasgow ‘British Empire Exhibition,’ and then the 1939 New York City ‘World’s Fair.’
A sergeant in the Intelligence Corps, little is known about his war years. A ‘correspondent’ writes in his obituary in the Times of Feb 5th 1982 that “after an unhappy period in the army at the beginning of the war, he settled for a while in a country cottage at Hurtmore near Godalming, where he produced a dazzling series of pen and ink drawings – landscapes, portraits and many characteristically vivid studies of sun flowers and tree trunks.” These are probably the drawings shown in the Redfern Gallery, June 1946. In 1948 he is recorded as being invalided out of the army and of going to live in Cyprus, where, initially on a brief visit, he remained a further eight years. He took up painting and drawing again and became part of the artistic community. Interviewed in the Cyprus Review by Rosemary Grimble, who with her husband Arthur Seligman wrote on the history of the island, she reported of Pollitzer that ‘he is caught up with life and the whole experience of living. Among the things he likes best, he says, are the sound of a harpsichord, driving a sports car at great speed, growing carnations, open air cinemas, watching the praying mantis and being left alone. His main aversions are fools, the gothic north, late nights, sightseeing, card games and all pastimes (only fools have times time to pass) social functions and pets.”
In October 1954, Pollitzer painted a cover for the Cyprus Review, ‘Ahmet with melon’ which showed a young Turkish boy. Pollitzer was chosen to decorate the foyer of the offices of Lawrence Durrell, the new British Head of Information in Nicosia. He designed an 18 x 9 metre mural made of 84 plates and 171 tiles of local manufacture. It comprised a series of historical references to the island from antiquity to the 1950s: Roman coins, churches, masks, idols and minarets. He also designed the large "Villa Fortuna at Agios Epiktitos, Kyrenia Cyprus for Marie Millington-Drake[5].
Pollitzer’s life on the island was centered around the artistic and the gay communities. Christopher Hurst, the publisher, who was to become a good friend, recounts in his autobiography how he learnt from Hurst that he used to ‘consort’ with the prostitutes in Farmagusta, only to learn later that he meant male prostitutes. Hurst writes of him "Sigmund Pollitzer died in the early 1980s so there is no harm in saying something here that he had never told me: that during the war he and a small group of homosexuals – one of which, Brian X. who was the great love of his life - were reported to the police, tried and jailed, for homosexual acts in private "[6]. On Cyprus Pollitzer managed to keep his activities out of the sight of the authorities but had a close escape when “one particular love, a Greek Cypriot called Dino, who after a carefree period had shown signs of a nasty character and caused all sorts of grief, finally end[ed] up in prison”[7]. Pollitzer later told Hurst how another ex-pat friend had been thrown off the island under similar circumstances.
With the growth of violent troubles on the island he left in 1956 and by September 1957 he had settled in the Fornillo district of Positano in Italy. From there he would visit Venice annually and Rome frequently. In his final interview in 1982, Roger Pinkham describes Pollitzer as a ‘hermit and woman-hater who was also a brilliant gardener’.[8]
Exhibitions.
Pollitzer exhibited numerous times from the late forties onwards, especially in London’s, West End Galleries.
Brook Street Gallery, [March] 1936: Decorative glass and water-colours. Advert in the Times, March 5th
Redfern Gallery, [5th] – 21st November 1941: Surrealist drawings alongside work by Paul Nash, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, John Tunnard, Graham Sutherland, Alastair Moreton, Henry Moore. In a show of nine English painters, reviewed in the 5th November Times which wrote of Pollitzer that he “contributes some surrealist drawings done with a very delicate pencil line”.
Redfern Gallery, [June] 1946: Reviewed in the Times 1st June 1946 “his drawings and watercolours…ae detailed studies of torn and twisted trees or of other intricate vegetable forms…”
Redfern Gallery, 3rd-25th October 1947: Sigmund Pollitzer, Patrick Heron and Léon Zack,
Redfern Gallery, Summer Exhibition July -September 1948: Other exhibitors included Bacon, Bonnard, Epstein, Gaugin, Klee, Matisse, Moore, Nash, Picasso, Piper, Renoir, Sickert
Atkinson Art Gallery [Southport], 57th Spring Exhibition of Modern Art, May-September 1948: Other exhibitors included Lowry, Duncan Grant, Nash and Clifford Hall.
Roland, Browse and Delbanco April 1949: Old Sculpture and Modern Drawings Exhibition. Other exhibitors included Colquhoun, Augustus John, Kokoschka, Minton, Modigliani, Moore, Sickert.
Hanover Gallery 1949: Drawings from Cyprus (30). Note: ‘The drawings on a brown ground are a new medium devised by the artist. Despite its appearance of a print, the drawing is made direct in a solution of walnut on a prepared ground, and the line is afterwards dissolved’.
Hanover Gallery 1951: Exhibited alongside Eileen Agar
Redfern Gallery Summer Exhibition 1951: Other exhibitors included Burra, Degas, Ernst, Gertler, Lautrec, Minton, Moore, Picasso, Pissarro, Vaughan.
British Institute Nicosia. 1951, 1954, 1955.
Peter Jones Gallery, June-July 195[?]
La Chiocciola, Padova, Italy March -April 1958
Galleria 88, in via Margutta, Rome, 9 and 23 April 1964: Paintings and drawings on Italian themes
Galleria 88, in via Margutta, Rome, 2 and 19 October, 1968:
Galleria 88, in via Margutta, Rome, [?] 1969
Galleria 88, in via Margutta, Rome, 6-23 May 1970:
Galleria 88, in via Margutta, Rome, [?] 1974.
Sorrento, in Corso Italia 211, 27 September and 4 October 1975 “Aquae Romanum Opus Sorrento” group show
The London house Collection which is part of the Faringdon Collection of Buscot Park contains 2 pieces entitled ‘Tunnelled Wood’ dated 1945 and 1946.
The Victoria and Albert Museum holds examples of his glass designs.
Bibliography
Romito, Matilde “La Pittura di Positano nel ‘900”, Pandemos, 2011
Romito, Matilde “Sigmund Pollitzer, un artista inglese fra Positano e Venezia”, Positano, 2016
Hurst, Christopher “The View from King, Street: An Essay in autobiography:” 1997
Roger Pinkham : Interview with Sigmund Pollitzer for the Thirties Society, 1982, No. 2 (1982), pp. 5-12, by The Twentieth Century Society
[1] Christopher Hurst “The View from King, Street: An Essay in autobiography: 1997”
[2] Roger Pinkham : Interview with Sigmund Pollitzer for the Thirties Society, 1982, No. 2 (1982), pp. 5-12, by The Twentieth Century Society
[3] Ibid
[4] History of Transportation, see SURVEY OF ORIGINAL FINE AND DECORATIVE ARTS ON THE ROYAL MAIL SHIP QUEEN MARY, 2009, which records that there are 16 panels, 2 missing from stairway, 1 panel relocated Swimming Bath and the other panel is in storage. All panels are illustrated http://www.sterling.rmplc.co.uk/Final_Inventory_Report_2011.pdf
[5] Marie appears under a different name in Lawrence Durrell’s novel Bitter Lemons. There may have been a relationship developing between them, though within a few years, Marie, a passionate adventurer, had left the island and married Don Gaetano (1923-1993), 12th Duke of Carcaci and lived on Sicily.
[6] Christopher Hurst “The View from King, Street: An Essay in autobiography: 1997”
[7] ibid
[8] Roger Pinkham : Interview with Sigmund Pollitzer for the Thirties Society, 1982