Helaine Blumenfeld OBE has created more than 90 sculptures for private and public clients including Lincoln Center [New York], The Lancasters [London], the University of Cambridge and the University of Leicester. Her sculptures were shown at more than 70 exhibitions worldwide including Pietrasanta, Oslo, Salisbury Cathedral, New York, Holland… Currently Looking Up! at Canary Wharf, London
Sir John Tusa : Bo Lutoslawski is a ‘photographer with a deep insight into people and character, an extraordinary honesty and a capacity to reveal the identity of his sitters’
Sir John Tusa, a prominent journalist, writer and manager of BBC World Service and Barbican Centre portrait taken at home
I came to Witold Lutosławski in the evening because I was looking for a vindication for the catastrophe that had
just clipped my wings. I did not receive a passport from the communist authorities to go to London for the
opening of my exhibition of photographic portraits being prepared there.
My uncle invited me to a living room with soft lighting and stylish furniture. First, I complained about the injustice
of fate, and then Lutosławski calmed me down, patiently claiming that everything would be fine.
I listened to him with the hope that he was right. Eventually, I took out my camera and started taking pictures – it
was always part of our meetings.
A few years later, these photos were used on book covers, posters, on television, and in 2013 for the design of a
coin minted on the occasion of the centenary of the composer's birth.
This portrait was created during a conversation about completely personal matters, and later became a portrait
of Witold Lutosławski, the composer. Thus, the photo, taken in a homely atmosphere, entered the social space –
it travelled from hand to hand of unknown people on a metal disc.
I remember very well how it came about: it came about organically, intuitively from our conversation, from the
naturalness of our relationship.
May everything in life be equally creative.
2 months later on the 25th of January 1980 I arrived at London and walked into the October Gallery in
Bloomsbury, London and my exhibition was already opened. I was so happy to see those images all around me.