Topolski Century

Feliks Topolski’s 'Century' is, in the Polish expressionist’s own words, a ‘memoir’ of the twentieth century. It is an insightful and political 600 foot-long mural under a railway arch on the South Bank, winding its way around a succession of walls. In 1951, Topolski had his studio on the then largely derelict South Bank, where he had been commissioned to paint for the Festival of Britain. He was given a disused arch nearby, and the Century grew to fill that space. Topolski included in his work first-hand portrayals of Mao, Malcolm Luther King and Mick Jagger among the dense and sometimes chaotic swirls of paint. Topolski’s memoir opened to the public in 1984, and he continued to work on it until his death in 1989. Yet since then, it languished in relative obscurity in its underground home in Waterloo. Topolski’s Century was restored by Jim Dimond, who worked on it for 18 painstaking months until February 2009.