Sonja & Martin Frank (KunstPlatzl, Vienna) are delighted to screen their film at the ACF London. Sonja Frank's grandparents Fanni and Ludwig Grossmann were members and officials of the former Anti-fascist youth group Young Austria in Great Britain and maintained contact with former members in the post-war years.
The film showcases works of art by 12 Austrian refugees who were active in the Free Austria Movement (FAM). The film centres around Franz Pixner (1912-1998), a co-founder of the FAM. Having fought with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, he arrived in London in 1939. Primarily a sculptor he also worked as a graphic artist for the Austrian Centre and the exile theatre company Das Laterndl. He returned to Vienna in 1946.
Pixner and his artist friends Ernst Eisenmayer, Georg Eisler, Klara Hautmann-Kiss, Franzi Heidenreich, Rudi Kauders and Edith Propst returned to Austria after WWII and remained politically active anti-fascists. All of the mentioned had campaigned for the liberation of the Nazi-occupied countries, as well as Pixner's artist friends Helga Michie, Wolf Suschitzky and Eric Doitch (who remained in England) and Ruth Rimon and Wolfgang Schlosser, who moved to other countries. They were all part of the Free Austrian Movement and Young Austria, the youth group for Austrian refugees under 25 years of age.
In exile and after the war they created, among other things: architecture and pottery works, watercolours, oil paintings, ink drawings, sculptures, photographs, graphics, cartoons and poems.
An A3 poster book and A4 catalogues of Sonja Frank's exhibition about 12 FAM artists will be displayed in our library on the day.
Join us for the screening and then again at 7pm, the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies (London) is pleased to announce the launch of an online exhibition about the Laterndl Theatre at the Austrian Centre.
*Please note these events have seperate bookings. To book for the Laterndl Theatre event please click HERE.
More information: www.kunstplatzl.info
