Polish-Poster.com
Title
Polish Posters, Polish poster Art, Wiktor Sadowski
Description
Polish Poster Art began during the Mloda Polska, or Young Poland era. It was a period that lasted from roughly 1890 until about 1914. Before this, the most compelling pieces of artwork from Poland were wood cuts from the folk artists of the countryside and paintings. It is not surprising, then, that the first posters were created by painters and were heavily influenced by Polish folk art. The artists, at the time, also had their eyes open as to what else was going on in the world around them. At this time Art Nouveau was all the craze in Western Europe. Polish artistic attitudes revolved around reviving Polish Modernism and following the ideals of Art Nouveau. If we take a look at Sztuka by Teodor Axentowicz (1859-1938) we see that its style is very much reminiscent of Art Nouveau. Another of the early polish poster artists was Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1807). He was a painter that had traveled all over Europe. His posters set the standard for what was to become of Polish poster art. One of his posters is for a play that was performed only twice in Poland. The drawing and text in that poster are not just illustrations of the play, rather, they are a comment on the content. The difference is that anyone can illustrate what happens in the play, but Wyspianski was able to get to the core meaning of the play with simple images and text. Yet another early poster artist was Karol Frycz (1887-1963), a theater set designer and a painter. In 1904 he designed a poster for Melpomena's Portfolio. It is still heavily influenced by Art Nouveau.
The turmoil of WWI ended the Young Poland period. Poland, which had been divided between Russia, Austria, and Germany, regained its independence in 1918. With the re-emergence of an independent Poland, the polish poster began to come into its own as an art form. The architecture department at Warsaw's Polytechnic Institute taught geometric clarity and less devotion to painterly tradition. The Poles began to understand the power of the poster as an advertising tool. They felt that rapid communication could be had through the geometric. Tadeusz Gronowski (1894-1990) became the first Polish artist dedicated solely to posters. He maintained that the poster artist must not assert his personality since the poster is a "communication between seller and public". Gronowski's 1926 polish poster for Radion soap exemplifies this attitude. The simple geometric image of a black cat going into the wash basin and coming out white personified "Radion does the cleaning for you!" (In 1993, Waldemar Swierzy used the theme for a poster advertising an exhibition of Gronowski's work and in 1997 the Polish Post Office issued a stamp reproducing the poster).
At the same time, in the early 1920's, Edmund Bartlomiejczyk (1885-1950), a prominent book illustrator and engraver experimented with polish art poster. His academic and straightforward style is representative of early Polish Poster Art. In 1935 Bartlomiejczyk began teaching at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts where a more painterly approach to poster art developed that competed with the geometric style of the Polytechnic Institute for dominance. The imagery is very realistic and modeled. Another approach, championed by Tadeusz Gronowski, was very Geometric, so much so, that these artists felt that cubism was the answer. For the next 5 to 10 years much of Polish Poster Art looked very cubistic.
