One Hundred Hippies

Here Topolski has created a huge painting, with full length portraits, which is known as The Hippy Mural, or One Hundred Hippies.

Topolski has included here a wide range of prominent figures from 1960s London. Some of them visited him individually in his studio but many attended a two day party hosted by Topolski and a Parisian, Philippe Pierre, whom he met at the Roundhouse venue in Camden. Topolski commented that Pierre “commanded the hippy ‘scene’ in London”. The Frenchman invited a group from Eel Pie Island, a major 1960s music venue and squat on the River Thames at Twickenham, to come and join the party. Pierre himself is shown twice, playing a drum and dancing naked.

Some of the other individuals who can be identified are Mick Jagger, Michael Hollingshead, an early experimenter with LSD, Churchill’s granddaughter Arabella who helped set up the Glastonbury Festival, Nick Turner, whose band Hawkwind played at the party and Jim Anderson, editor of Oz magazine.