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The Poster Museum in Warsaw, the oldest institution of its type in the world, has reopened after a five-year break for major refurbishment.
A new exhibition of Polish posters, including many from the world-famous Polish Poster School, is now on display at the museum, which first opened in 1968.
It features 240 works showcasing 130 years of Poland’s history, and will remain open for three months in its current form before the exhibits are rotated for conservation.
The exhibition is divided into six chapters in chronological order, beginning with the turn-of-the-century Young Poland artistic movement, including a work by renowned painter and playwright Stanisław Wyspiański.
The exhibition then takes in interwar advertising as well as a 1944 wartime poster by Stanisław Miedzy-Tomaszewski urging people to participate in the Warsaw Uprising, reports Polskie Radio.
The next part covers postwar propaganda, before perhaps the centrepiece: works from the Polish Poster School that first emerged in the 1950s, including designs by artists such as Henryk Tomaszewski, Roman Cieślewicz and Wojciech Fangor. The exhibition then culminates with modern graphic design pieces.
The Polish Poster School, which had its roots in the country’s painting tradition and served as an outlet for artists working under the communist system, is often associated with the Polish films produced in the same era and has been influential globally in the development of graphic design.
Altogether, the museum’s collection comprises more than 63,000 works, including around 36,000 items in its Polish poster collection.
Because of the effects of daylight and humidity, the posters can only be shown for three months before being rotated with others in the collection. The next version, to open in June, will therefore contain different works.
The launch of the refurbished museum on Friday was attended by culture minister Marta Cienkowska, who said that she expects the relaunched museum to become “a source of inspiration for further generations of artists
“The Polish Poster School is an artistic hallmark of our country,” Cienkowska said. “It was the craft, imagination and international successes of Polish artists that contributed to the opening in 1968 of the Poster Museum in Wilanów, the first in the world.”
The Poster Museum, housed in Wilanów Palace, a 17th-century former royal residence in Warsaw, is a branch of the National Museum in Poland’s capital. Opened in 1968 as the posters of Polish artists grew in renown, it was the world’s first museum devoted to the art form.
Selecting the works for inclusion in the exhibition was very difficult, said Agnieszka Lajus, director of the National Museum in Warsaw, noting that the collection examines “not only the most important trends in art, but also important social and political events, to which poster art always reacts intensively”.
“One of the criteria, of course, was the artistic level of the poster – interesting language of the graphics, diversity. But the history behind a given poster was also important,” explained Bożena Pysiewicz, co-curator of the exhibition.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: MKiDN (under CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ben Koschalka is a translator, lecturer, and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.
