The poster art tradition in Poland really intrigues me. I was thinking about it today since a bistro in my neighborhood has several cool examples on the walls, which my four-year-old daughter and I were eyeing and discussing over lunch.
Since the late 1800s, with perhaps a heyday between the 1950s and 1980s, you’d have Polish artists commissioned to create bold, highly conceptual posters to announce various cultural events. Opera, theater, film, exhibitions, etc. The imagery tended to be surrealistic, but also often could be sexual, macabre, or whimsical. Never veering into sentimentality or kitsch.
As this nice summary of the genre (and the societal conditions that nurtured it) says:
Polish posters were not only pieces of art, but also intellectual labyrinths and games of hide-and-seek. Posters referred not only to emotions, but to intellect as well. Viewers were required to think.
Amazingly, these artists were simultaneously fulfilling the commission (make the client happy!), crystallizing the subject matter conceptually, even lacing the visuals with sly commentary on the subject matter, all while putting a distinctive, daring personal stamp on each work - yet still generally fitting in to the long arc of the tradition.
Even more amazingly, this kind of work became part of their mass culture, even in later years under communism. In fact, inevitably, it’s the modern era that has done the most to kill off unique Polish poster art, which has been rapidly supplanted by standard commercial street advertising for all the usual reasons.