Henryk Tomaszewski
The Graphic Poet
Prsten Gallery
February 25 – March 13, 2019

 

 

The retrospective exhibition of  Henryk Tomaszewski opens on Monday, February 25, 2018 at 7pm at the Prsten Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.

The retrospective exhibition presents Tomaszewski’s extensive body of work and covers more than fifty years of his artistic career. They range from very private to inherently public topics and includes 50 drawings and, of course, 131 of his celebrated posters.

About the author:
One of the seminal graphic designers in post-war Poland, an illustrator and an educator, Henryk Tomaszewski (1914-2005) is the founding father of the Polish School of Poster. His influential work has received international acclaim as far back as the ‘50s, whereas his work in education left a profound mark on generations on Polish and foreign, particularly French designers, marking the world of design up until today.

Faced with the incredibly strong influences of Polish nationalism, Catholicism and communism, Tomaszewski was undeterred – he created a thoroughly singular, deeply personal visual language, in which his persona is strongly manifested. He made his name as a satirical artist just before the war, regularly publishing in magazines. From 1947 for some ten years, his most important employer was the Polish film distributor CWF, and from the mid-’fifties onward, theatres and museums were his main source of commissions. He also illustrated children’s books and designed book covers.

However, his main activity remained poster design, mainly for films, theatre and art exhibitions. His oeuvre comprises almost 300 posters. Types and photography are hardly used in Tomaszewski’s posters. This puts them firmly in the tradition of the pictorial poster, although they are usually graphic rather than picturesque in character, and they are characterised by his handwriting.

About the Brumen Foundation:
The Brumen Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, established in 2003 whose aim is promoting quality design and informing a wider audience of the fact that design is all around us and is a key contributor to our quality of life.

The Foundation’s main focus is organising the Brumen Biennial of Slovenian Design—the central event in the field of design in Slovenia—and the Brumen Awards—the highest national professional recognitions in design—, while also organising exhibitions of prominent designers from both Slovenia and abroad.

The Foundation is named after Jože Brumen (1930-2000), Slovenian pioneer in the field of visual communications.

Poster reproduction courtesy of Filip Pągowski

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