Art sans frontiers

I cycled over to Oxton this morning to see an exhibition which the Williamson Art Gallery is running jointly with the National Museum in Gdansk. On my way through Birkenhead Park I bumped into my friends Mel and Amanda who were also out for a bike ride, so the three of us ended up going to the Gallery together, which made it all the more fun.

The exhibition was of the work of Alfred Lipczinski (1876 - 1974) a Polish-German (the Prussian empire meant that borders got a bit 'confused'...) who fled to Liverpool following a 'spot of bother' over his National Service, lived in a squat and became part of the local bohemian art set. He studied at Liverpool Art School under Augustus John and was beginning to make a name for himself when the First World War loomed. As a 'German' living a rather unconventional lifestyle in the UK he was considered a bit suspect at the time and so he was interned, first in Chester, then the Isle of Man and finally in London before being deported to Danzig (Gdansk) Free State, where he spent the rest of his life.

Lipczinski's story interests me in particular for two reasons, firstly because one of my great, great grandfathers, Hermann Leibstein, also came from that part of Europe where the national boundaries have changed many times over the years - variously part of Poland/Germany/the USSR/Ukraine as far as I can understand it... and secondly because a great grandfather from another branch of my family, Friedrich Kopp, was also interned in wartime because he was German-born. I think he was put in a camp on the Isle of Man too...

The exhibition included some great paintings and drawings from throughout Lipczinski's life. I enjoyed it very much and left feeling somehow closer to the ancestors I never had the chance to meet.

Here's Lipczinski's self-portrait.