Felily Odzikowski: Parisian street artist

WHEN LOOKING FOR examples of Parisian street silhouettes, the name Felily Odzikowski comes up again and again. However, all I know about him comes from the large number of his silhouettes I’ve collected over the years.

Nobody, it seems, has ever taken the time to catalogue of write about the work of this iconic Parisian street artist. Not until today at least!

Since I was in Paris last week I took the opportunity to visit a couple of the haunts where I know he worked to see if I could get a better idea of the life he may have led.

Felily silhouettes are often tiny, with heads not much larger than an average coin, and come mounted on small, usually printed cards. The earliest of his silhouettes I’ve found are dated 1934, while the latest is dated 1966. That’s quite a long time for anybody to be working on the streets of Paris.

The Name Felily Odzikowski

Unlike most French street silhouettists Felily always took care to sign or label his silhouettes. Perhaps he was aware this was the only way his name would ever be preserved. His real name seems to have been Felix (as printed on his earlier work) but most often it’s written as Felily which I assume was his chosen nickname. His 1934 silhouettes include the initials •EFO• which at first I thought might refer to an exhibition or venue where he worked, but now I think was perhaps an earlier nickname. I’ve no idea want the ‘E’ stands for.

Odzikowski is a Polish name, so it seems likely Felily was a Polish artist who spent most of his life living and working on the streets of Paris. I visualise him as bing quite small (like his silhouettes) and full of a good-humoured banter, with which he charmed his clients as he cut their profiles. This, of course, is only my imagination!

Visiting the Arcades des Champs-Elysées

Felily silhouettes from the early 1950s often include the address 78, Avenue des Champs-Elysées. At that time the artist printed a new, dated card every year. These cards seem to vary in colour: red for 1950, green for 1951 and so on. I don’t know how long he kept this up for.

It’s possible Feliy knew the work of Inger Eidem, working in Tivoli Gardens at the time. She also had the habit of printing a new backing card every year. Another reason I suspect they knew each other is that Felily also cut caricature versions of his silhouettes, providing his clients with both a portrait and caricature mounted on separate cards. Inger Eidem is the only other artist I’ve seen who made this odd habit into a regular part of their work.

Being in Paris I naturally took the time to visit no 78, Avenue des Champs-Elysées, and see where Felily used to work.

What I found was an imposing stone arch leading to a pedestrian shopping arcade of ancient but rather faded splendour. Today there’s a rather neglected, down-market feel to the shops there, but it was evidently once a very expensive part of town . The architecture is extraordinary with a magnificent, high, vaulted, glass ceiling above.

A short history of the arcade

Les Arcades des Champs-Elysées first opened in 1926. It was designed as a luxurious indoor shopping arcade, situated on the ground floor of a building spanning nos 76 and 78 Avenue des Champs-Elysées. The arcade goes right through the block with another entrance on Rue de Ponthieu at the back. 

Construction began after 1924 when the diamond merchant and property tycoon Léonard Rosenthal acquired the Hôtel Dufayel. He commissioned a firm of architects to replace the old hotel with a new retail outlet. The decorative scheme of the new shopping arcade was conceived as a blend of the art-deco and neo-classical styles.

Some ornamental features (such as eight columns crafted from Scottish grey granite) were salvaged from the original Hôtel Dufayel and repurposed. Additional columns, made of red granite with ionic capitals, were introduced to support the ambitious glass roof. 

At its inception, a traditional Parisian café with a terrace and bandstand occupied the centre of the gallery, surrounded by upmarket boutiques either side. The boutiques continue to thrive (although most are no longer so upmarket). The café is also still thriving, but now run as a Starbucks!

How did a silhouettist fit in?

I must admit, when I first entered the Arcades des Champs-Elysées I was a bit taken aback. The obvious question: how could a Polish street artist like Felily possibly afford one of these then-grand boutiques? Even if he could afford it, what would be have put in it? Would he really have filled it with a display of his diminutive scissor-cut silhouettes?

A possible answer came when I looked towards the cluttered centre of the arcade. Although the two sides are kept free for pedestrian traffic, the centre is another matter. Today it is walled off with a series of glass screens protecting the Starbucks area at the front, as well as two or three large craft and souvenir emporia further into the arcade. These make it hard to walk from side to side across the space.

Could it be that this central area, behind the large café, originally also made space for series of smaller stalls? Perhaps even barrows of the kind used by market traders all over the world? Was there a market here? The space certainly feels like a market hall.

If so, it’s far more likely that an artist like Felily could have run a profitable business from such a stall. The fact that these are all now gone, replaced by screened-off areas, doesn’t surprise me. I saw a similar process take place in Covent Garden, London, during the 1990s and 2000s. Gradually the open spaces in the centre of the piazza became walled off by glass screens, protecting the interests of businesses who progressively rented out the space. Instead of being able to walk freely across the open space, visitors are now confined to narrow corridors along the edges.

I can easily imagine a similar process taking place in the Arcades des Champs-Elysées.

Silhouettes from the Place de Tertre in Montmartre

At some point during the late 1950s or early ’60s Felily moved his focus to the Place du Tertre in Montmartre. It’s also possible that he worked in both locations for a while: frequenting Montmartre in the summer months and returning to the more sheltered arcade in the winter.

Quite recently I came across this Felily silhouette mounted on a distinctive blue and red pallet-design card. The card is signed, but undated. However, I immediately recognised the design. I’ve seen many anonymous Montmartre silhouettes, cut during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, mounted on much larger monochromatic versions of the same card.

The card is clearly designed with the modern tourist trade in mind. It includes small motifs of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur Basilica, together with other well-known Parisian landmarks.

My suspicion is that other street artists, seeing this clever design, later took and copied it for themselves, removing Felily’s signature. Sadly, they did not add their own, so it’s impossible to know anything about these artists. Their work is occasionally fun, but essentially unsigned and worthless. If you wish to see some of them I’ve posted a couple of them to my Bluesky feed.

While working in the Place du Tertre, Felily also printed a set of simpler cards with gold edges. These seem to come in two versions: one with and one without a printed label. Like most Parisian street artists, Felily would have supplied two copies of every silhouette. Quite likely he would have mounted one copy on a labeled card and the other on plain.

Felily’s silhouettes are most easy to spot by their diminutive size. They are less than half the size of most silhouettes made on the street in Paris today.

As I often explain to people, silhouettes become harder to cut the smaller you make them. For this reason anybody able to work consistently at this scale has my immediate respect.

There are other stylistic clues to spot in his work. Most typically the V-shaped slash cuts he used to depict necklines when a more formal collar and tie are not present. He also on occasion cut W-shaped lapel lines into the body of the silhouette.

However, despite their easy-to-spot nature I have never identified an unsigned Odzikowski silhouette. For this reason I suspect there are not many about. The few silhouettes he mounted onto unlabelled cards tend to be hand signed. These, of course, are his most valuable work!

Felily is an artist I’d love to have met and had a conversation with. Although I’m sure his guttural Parisian French would have been hard for me to understand. If you have a silhouette of his in a drawer somewhere I’d love to see a photo of it, particularly if it has a date or other useful data. There are many gaps still for me to fill in.

Would Felily have agreed to swap a silhouette with me? Who knows. I rather suspect not!