Censorship, Creativity, and the Polish School of Posters

Words by Susan Malmstrom & Annamaria Roskewitsch

Circus, Hubert Hilscher, 1966

The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography, located on the campus of ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, created an Archive to serve as a repository for original and rare materials that document the history and teaching of typography, letterform, and graphic design. The collection focuses on materials from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, with an emphasis on designers and educators associated with the College, Southern California, or our Center’s namesake, educator and renowned designer Professor Leah Hoffmitz Milken (1953-2014).  Our collections include printed and original material, including books, posters, specimen sheets, photographs, and preparatory work.

In 2019, HMCT acquired a cache of works created by various artists of the Polish School of Posters as a donation from Leonard Konopelski, Professor of Art at ArtCenter College of Design. His generosity in sharing these posters (some of which are featured in this article), as well as his time spent with HMCT staff reviewing the individual works and explaining their origins, allowed for the establishment of the Leonard Felix Konopelski Collection.

Conventional wisdom holds that artistic freedom is paramount to the creative process. Sometimes, however, loss of control can paradoxically lead artists down new and different avenues of artistic expression. Such was the case with the Polish School of Posters, born of the impact of onerous bureaucratic regulations imposed by the reigning Communist regime. The origin story of the School highlights a remarkable moment in graphic design history, one of creativity rising to not only meet but triumph over the challenge of draconian censorship rules. As they labored to create work within the guidelines set down for them, the artists of the School ended up influencing graphic design on a global scale.

Every aspect of Polish life was subject to government control during the time of the People’s Republic (1947-1989), and the cultural and entertainment industries were not exempt. In 1947, the state-run film distribution agency, Film Polski, hired artists and designers to create posters announcing their films. Since all films were censored, including those arriving from the American studios, the original marketing poster designs could not be used. Thus, the Polish School of Posters, active from the 1950s through the 1980s, was formed to generate posters for every film, exhibition, and event intended for public audiences in Poland under the auspices of the government. The challenge posed to the artists by the censorship guidelines the School had to follow was formidable. For example, film advertisements were not allowed to incorporate any shots of actors, titles, or film stills. As the state was not concerned about the design of the posters or how they looked, the resultant poster images were never studio-driven but rather artist-driven. Each one carried the individual artist’s interpretation, giving it a unique view of what the film was about.

Henryk Tomaszewski is regarded as the father of the Polish School of Posters. Appointed as a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1952, he taught up-and-coming designers of the next generation, encouraging them to find their own style and form of self-expression. Another element of control over the work—or lack thereof—that helped develop and determine the School’s unique approach was an ongoing shortage of paper and tools, often forcing artists to rethink how to convey their messages based only on the materials they had on hand. You can see this in Tomaszewski’s minimalistic, spare work, described by poster historian Alain Weill as “. . . like a child drawing with clumsy hand-lettering.”

Another leading artist of the School, Andrzej Klimowski, was born in London to Polish parents and trained at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Academy of Fine Art. He moved to Poland when his artwork caught the attention of the leading theatre and film companies there, at a time when many Eastern Europeans dreamed of going West. He felt that the enforced government censorship of the Polish School of Posters protected artists from the usual Western commercial film company pressures—a sentiment shared by many at the School.  Klimowksi eventually returned to the UK, where he is now Professor Emeritus at the Royal College of Art.

The co-founder of the Polish School of Posters, Waldemar Świerzy, created over 1,500 posters—a number that still stands as a worldwide graphic design production record. His expressive work, bearing a strong sense of motion, garnered many awards and his work was often exhibited. One of his most famous works, a poster for the film The Dogs of War, was originally created with gouache on cardboard.

Designer and painter Jan Lenica, who lectured on poster art at Harvard University in 1974, worked in early animation as well. Lenica once said, “Poster art seems closest to jazz: it is all about being able to play somebody else’s theme in one’s own way.”

Arguably one of the most famous pieces produced by the Polish School of Posters was created by painter, illustrator, and printmaker Franciszek Starowieyski, a poster for a film based on the book Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by Bruno Schulz. Starowieyski’s work is surreal, with themes focusing on confronting death. Starowieyski was the first Polish artist to have a solo exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1985).

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