Feliks Topolski (1907-1989), painter, caricaturist, illustrator, and muralist, chronicled many of the twentieth-century's most significant people and associated historical events. Born in Poland and centered in London his entire creative career, Topolski embraced modernism's inventive freedoms but worked at the edge of its mainstream, thanks in part to his bold expressionist style that brought acclaim as well as controversy. Combining figurative and abstract elements with layered gestures of incandescent color, Topolski's artwork—particularly his portraits—have been described as being rhapsodic, vigorous, volatile, and even explosive. Because of its interest in British literary portraiture, the Ransom Center acquired Topolski's full-length portrait of G.B. Shaw in 1960, later commissioning the artist to paint a portrait series of great living British writers and playwrights. The commission of "British Greats" eventually included the portraits of, among others, W. H. Auden, Ivy Compton-Burnett, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, John Osborne, J. B. Priestley, Bertrand Russell, C. P. Snow, Stephen Spender, Edith Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh and Rebecca West. The Center planned to exhibit the portraits and publish a catalogue, but many of the sitters objected to Topolski's work and the exhibition and publication were never realized. Years later, F. Warren Roberts, then Director of the Center, wrote consolingly to Topolski that the reaction of the sitters "was probably more of a compliment to your talent than anything else, because you seem to have a unique ability to extract submerged character traits and present them graphically. Perhaps one day we can take up this idea again." Echoing Roberts, this exhibition brings together, for the first time, all twenty paintings from the original commission, enabling the Ransom Center to finally display Topolski's stunning and controversial work. The artist's large portrait of G.B. Shaw, illustrations for Shaw's plays and selected broadsides from Topolski's Chronicle are also included in the exhibition.