The book presents the history of Polish graphic tradition leading to the so-called phenomenon of the Polish poster – the history, which starts with the first printing workshops in Krakow in the sixteenth century. It continues with the birth of graphic arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through workshop experiments in the nineteenth century, modernist transformations, world-famous Polish graphic arts in the interwar period, and the birth of the Polish school of graphic design in the 1930s, leading to the rise of the Polish school of posters in the second half of that century. It then goes on to Solidarity’s affiche brut of the next generation and ultimately the full bloom of a young, poetic and somewhat anarchic poster at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The book offers a voyage through 1724 reproductions of works created by several hundred artists, which come from different collections in Poland and around the world, showing transformations in this Polish specialty.
