Breaking with false myths? – Cuban posters from the 60s and 70s of the 20th century

Breaking with false myths? – Cuban posters from the 60s and 70s of the 20th century as seen through perspective of the poster production in Czechoslovakia and Poland of the same period

9th August – 20th October

Openning of the exhibition: Thursday 8th June 2019, 7 p.m.

Format B1 Gallery

curator of the exhibition: Jacek Szelegejd

This current exhibition, which was opened in the middle of this year’s holiday season, doesn’t accept to be remembered as just “summer adventure” with poster. It tries to challenge quite a number of serious problems and bring some questions of importance. One of the aims was to get the audience acquainted with at least part of rich collection of foreign posters housed within the Poster Museum in Wilanów. That collection until recently was completely unknown to the visitors as it was stashed on the shelves and closed in the archive rooms.
The subject of our investigations and comparisons within the bulk of the exhibition will be political and cultural (i.e. film, theatre and the announcements of other cultural and artistic events) posters from three countries: Cuba, Czechoslovakia and Poland – created in the same period, the decades of 60s and 70s of the 20th century. Those years did not only marked the greatest “poster boom” in the aforementioned countries. They were also marking a particular time in the history of the world, when posters reached the highest rank among the other fine arts and when all artists eagerly experimented with posters as this practice was considered noble and enriching .
The materials used in our display were gathered and demonstrated in such way as to unable viewers to make their own comparisons of various concepts, stylistics , the techniques of visual communications as well as printing techniques used in the process poster making, comparing similar and (sometimes) even the same subjects designed by the artists of Cuba, Czechoslovakia and Poland.
We intended to create the situation in which the visitors will be able to analize and make judgements on their own, and then, answer (or just try to do it) question put right in the title of the exhibition: if the Cuban posters were but pale reflection of “inspiring” examples from Poland and Czechoslovakia? They would also accept or throw away the idea of discussing the “national schools” applied to poster production. Or, perhaps, they will draw the conclusion that artistic posters (with which we deal in our show) are extremely individualistic expressions and as such should be considered as unique, unrepeatable phenomena of human genius?

Curator of the exhibition: Jacek Szelegejd