Most of these are from my Polish Poster collection. They were given to me as a gift from Arthur Winiarski after the Opole Festival. Graphics of these are from PolishPoster.com . Here is an interesting history of Polish Poster Art, and an over view.
I first became aware of Polish Poster Art when I went with Stan Borys to the Opole Music Festival in June of 1991. There were copies of a charming poster advertising the event all over: on the side of the hotel, in the cafe and restaurant windows, at the entrance to the train station, on placards at the taxi stands, everywhere. I was mesmerized by the simplicity of the image. It was a canary with an elegant opera singer standing on its back, being led by a very formal butler. There was a medallion with details of the event in the upper left corner, and a tacked on strip of paper saying Opole ’91 in the upper right corner. I asked the woman at the front desk of the hotel where I could buy a copy of the poster. She gave me an amused look and told me they were not for sale, but I was welcome to just take one, which I did. On the way to Warsaw after the festival, at the train station, I dropped my rolled-up poster between the train and the platform. I climbed down onto the tracks not sure when the train would roll, and retrieved it. It is my prized poster, framed and glowing from across my office in pastel yellow, blue, and green. Three short years later at the ’94 Sopot Music Festival, the event poster for it was a tacky mishmash of corporate logos and branding, similar to what you would see anywhere in the States or Western Europe. Polish Poster Art died in the early nineties along with the old system that sponsored it, and was often subverted by it.
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