Hi,

This week a look at a Polish-British artist who you may not have heard of, but you've almost certainly seen his work if you ever flew from Terminal 1 at Heathrow Airport.

Before we get to that, this newsletter is dedicated to Maciej Żuławski, who passed away last weekend. He was the eldest Żuławski clan member and part of a distant tree where everybody seems to work in medicine and is actually sensible. He was 97.

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A poor breakfast for Dali

In the early 1960s, famed Spanish artist Salvador Dali was apparently sitting at breakfast with two people and arguing with them. One was George Farkas, owner of the Alexander's department store chain, and the other was Stefan Knapp, a Pole who had survived a Siberian gulag and was now a naturalised Brit.

Farkas had offered to commission Dali to create some new outdoor murals for some of his stores. But it turned out he'd also offered Knapp the same thing. Dali insisted that he had some beautiful designs with giraffes floating upside down and that Farkas certainly didn't want to miss out on that. But when the question came up of how Dali would make the murals, Dali came up blank... The commission went to Knapp.

Don't feel too sorry for Dali. He later went on to design the Chupa Chups logo and raked it in.

Who was Stefan Knapp?

Stefan Knapp was born in Biłgoraj in south-east Poland in July 1921. He was at university in Lviv when World War II broke out, and was deported to a Siberian gulag. After the Soviets switched sides in 1942, he was released and joined the Anders Army on their way to Britain. He spent the rest of the war in the RAF.

After the war, he studied art at the Royal Academy and UCL. He slowly moved away from painting and became obsessed with perfecting a mural technique that would last a thousand years.

After a series of smaller successes, he won a huge new commission in 1958: murals for the new Heathrow Airport.

The original Heathrow look

The murals went into production soon after being commissioned in a hanger Knapp had loaned from his old friends at the RAF. They were installed in the original London Airport, and then became part of Terminal 1 when the airport rebranded to become Heathrow in 1966.

Below, you can watch a short AP news piece from 1961 about their ongoing production, including footage of Knapp walking across the murals while wearing skis:

In 1996, they became part of T1's Flight Connection Centre. The murals remained part of T1's aesthetic fabric up until 2017 when literally everything in the building was auctioned off (T1 has been closed since 2015).

The fate of all the Heathrow panels at auction is unclear today (although Vice magazine wrote up a short piece about how depressing the event was). But it looks like you can buy some of the panels here for the meagre price of 87,500 GBP each...

The largest steel mural in the world

If you watched the video above, you'll have heard that Knapp was working on both the Heathrow job and another commission in New Jersey at the same time. That commission was for George Farkas.

The legend goes that Farkas discovered the work of Knapp when travelling through London Airport. He soon after hired him to make a design for a new giant department store. Farkas liked the result so much, he chose Knapp again even when talking to Salvador Dali about murals for more of his stores.

The design Knapp brought to that first Alexander's store was taken from his memories flying for the RAF. He wanted to create an abstract interpretation of what it was like to look down on the world from his cockpit.

The resulting mural was made up of 280 panels and was 200 x 50 feet (61 x 15 metres). It weighed 60 tonnes.

At the time, it was the largest steel mural in the world.

It became a local New Jersey icon when the department store in Paramus opened in 1963.

In the 1990s, however, the Alexander's chain got into financial trouble and the department store was closed down. Initially, the mural remained on the wall while the building became overgrown with plants, but it eventually went into storage after the land was sold to IKEA.

Knapp's mural disappeared from the public eye for years until 2015 when parts of it became an exhibit at a local museum.

Repurposing the mural

Happily, this year, the sheets of the mural are getting a new lease of life as part of a new hospital that is opening soon. Since the mural is so familiar to local residents who grew up in the area, the idea is that the facility will also gain an immediately comfortable and familiar feel by making use of the artwork.

You can watch a video about it here, which includes lots of HD close-ups of the mural and gives a sense of how spectacular it is:

I love this repurposing project, it's so much better than it sitting indoors, although not all the panels are being used. It's unclear what's happening with the rest, though it looks like they are staying in the local museum. I personally hope more of it gets used for other community-focused outdoor projects.

One digital project has kept it alive in other ways. Although most people outside of New Jersey have never heard of this giant mural, it has reached millions via the popular indie rockers Real Estate. The band grew up nearby and immortalised the forgotten mural on the cover of a 2014 album fittingly titled Atlas, in line with Knapp's vision of the world.

Upon request by Knapp's estate, the artist has a short biography included in the sleeve notes too. Every song on the album has millions of listens on Spotify, so even in fleeting digital form, Knapp's art is still reaching all sorts of people around the world - not just those who pass through Heathrow Airport.

Where to see Knapp's work in Europe today

If you're in Poland and want to see Knapp's work, you can ride the Warsaw Metro and stop off at Wilanowska where you'll find two of his murals, one at each end of the platform by the stairs. He also made the RAF mural at Pole Mokotowskie station. Elsewhere, you can find one of his big enamel murals on a building of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń - watch a video about it here (switch on CC for English subtitles):

If you're in Wales, you can visit the Mid Wales Arts Centre which was founded by Knapp's widow Cathy. The building and ground features much of his work. You can also see a few pieces from his centenary exhibition in 2021 on their website.

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Article of the week

Daniel Bird, who worked closely with Andrzej Żuławski for years, is excellent at digging out all the strange little connections and serendipities where the paths of different artists crossed. In his article here, he brings together Andrzej, the Themersons, Antonin Artaud, Christopher Nolan and Susan Sontag.

He wrote the article while working on converting two experimental and influential short films by E. Elias Merhige so that they could be screened at a planetarium in Brussels.

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That's all for this week. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this story, please forward it to people you think are cool.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Other stuff

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