The centre was founded in 1946 by Alfred Rozelaar Green, who studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and Atelier Gromaire before the Second World War.
[1] He moved to London at the end of the war and aimed to revolutionise British art education.
Artists included Robert Couturier, Fernand Léger, André Lhote, Jean Lurçat, Fred Klein, Agnès Capri and Germaine Richier.
He was also supported by English artists who visited to give lectures, including Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore and Julian Trevelyan.
Forty-Eight Theatre, a company formed and supported by Velona Pilcher and directed by David Tutaev, rehearsed and performed at the centre in the late 1940s.