Koestler Arts is a charity that helps ex-offenders, secure patients and detainees in the UK to express themselves creatively. It promotes the arts in prisons, secure hospitals, immigration centres and in the community, encouraging creativity and the acquisition of new skills as a means to rehabilitation. The Koestler Awards were founded in 1962 and the organisation became a charitable trust in 1969 following a bequest from the British-Hungarian author, Arthur Koestler.
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FREE, 2012 exhibition of entries to the Koestler Awards, curated by Sarah Lucas
Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler joined the Communist Party of Germany, but he resigned in 1938 after becoming disillusioned with Stalinism.
Koestler in 1969
January 1945, Kibbutz Ein HaShofet, Koestler is 5th from the right
Arthur Koestler in Tel Aviv in 1949
Arthur Koestler statue in Budapest