ANGLO-FRENCH ART CENTRE
Anglo-French Art Centre, sometimes the Anglo-French Art School, was founded by Alfred Rozelaar-Green (1917-2013) who spent two years studying physics, mathematics, and engineering at Cambridge University before leaving for London and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1937. The following year, he went to Paris to study Fine Art at the Académie Julian and under the tutelage of the social-realist painter Marcel Gromaire. While in Paris, he met his first wife Nita Bassetti, an artist's model who had posed for Matisse, and together they had three sons. In 1946 he established his Art Centre in the former closed St John's Wood School of Art. Green set about revolutionising British post-war art education by inviting artists from France and elsewhere to exhibit, teach and lecture. These included such luminaries as André Lhote (1885-1962), Lurçat, Leger, Clavé, Couturier, Germaine Richier, and he also received great support from English artists as visiting lecturers who helped to attract the best of students. These teachers included Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Julian Trevelyan, Victor Pasmore, as well as art critics and museum directors. Many fine exhibitions took place at the centre and as well as by the teaching staff, invited artists who showed their work included Jankel Adler, Robert Colquhoun, and Robert MacBryde. However, by 1951 Green had spent all his money, and the Arts Council withdrew its grant, so the centre closed and Alfred went to live in France until his death on 7 July 2013.