"In postwar Poland, film poster artists employed the universally recognized symbols of the Western - horse, six-shooter, boots, tin-star badge, Stetson, saddle - to convey violence as a negative force. Unlike many other art forms, the film poster did not fall within the censor's domain because it was not expected to pose a threat to the social order. But messages were conveyed through subtle means of symbol and color. The Polish poster has been likened to the Trojan horse, with the artist smuggling messages onto the streets in the guise of ephemera."--BOOK JACKET. "The posters displayed so strikingly in this book, and discussed in three essays, are from the golden age of Polish poster-making, the mid-1940s to the 1970s."--BOOK JACKET.

The traditions of Polish graphic art and the influences of folk culture, nationalism, and European art movements are evidenced in a collection of posters created by Polish artists from 1961 to 1977

Harold Pinter said of the graphic artist Andrzej Klimowski, "He leads the field by a very long furlong, out on his own, making his own weather. He is Klimowski, unafraid." In the mid-1970s, Klimowski's fearlessly original artwork caught the eye of leading Polish theatre and film companies, for whom he designed some of the period's most influential and iconic posters. The London-born artist, who moved to Poland at a time when many East Europeans dreamed of going West, went on to create posters for works by filmmakers and playwrights from Scorsese to Altman, Beckett to Brecht. Drawing on folk art, Polish Surrealism and the work of his mentor at the Warsaw Academy, Henryk Tomaszewski, Klimowski uses techniques including photomontage and linocut to create posters that are filled with metaphor, drama and originality. The Klimowski Poster Book compiles the best of his Polish work, while also tracing his career after his return to London, where he remains Emeritus Professor of Illustration at the Royal College of Art --

Drawings are not simply tools for communication but important instruments for investigating reality and its structure. This pathbreaking book, richly illustrated, with exercises for readers, illuminates the complex interactions between the material