With almost 60 chapters, contributions from 30 authors and nearly 450 pages, VeryGraphic: Polish Designers of the 20th Century is the first comprehensive history of Polish graphic design. The book showcases its immense and diverse legacy, from the world-renowned Polish Poster school to the lesser-known achievements of artists in the field of applied graphic design, including books and covers, typography and lettering, logos and visual identification as well as packaging. Chronologically detailing the work of over 60 of the most prominent Polish designers, the volume offers a review of Polish graphic design unprecedented in its scope. The cover of each copy is hand-painted, rendering it a truly one-of-a-kind object.

Showcasing the extraordinary achievements of the proponents of Polish modernism from the 1890s to 1918, this ground-breaking book brings together pioneering research with beautiful imagery. Mloda Polska, or Young Poland, embraced the integration of fine and applied arts, motivated by a desire to establish a distinctive national style at a time of political uncertainty. Patriotic values were expressed through a diverse visual language that was fuelled by national identity, but also looked beyond Poland to Western Europe and the influences of Impressionism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, while also displaying parallels with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Young Poland's painting has been discussed within an international arena, but its decorative arts and architecture has yet to enjoy broad exposure. Here, for the first time, the considerable achievements of the movement's applied artists will be discussed, both from a national and international perspective. Highlighting Young Poland's integration of fine and decorative arts, the movement's ideological, stylistic and formal commonalities with British Arts and Crafts, and the vision of Ruskin and Morris, will be drawn out to provide fascinating insights for Western and Eastern audiences alike.

Out of the Ordinary is the first substantial overview of Polish design. It examines the work of 36 key figures, from Stanislaw Wyspianski, the early modernist furniture and interior designer, to Wojciech Wybieralski, one of the first designers to emerge from Poland's turbulent transition from a Communist to a capitalist economy in the 1990s. The book is composed of chronological sections, each introduced by a short essay discussing the works in relation to the relevant phase in Polish history. Examples of furniture design, graphic design (including posters), textiles, clothing, ceramics and vehicle design are all included here, reproduced in more than 350 color photographs: among them, the batik textiles of Antoni Buszek; the glassware of Michal Titkow; the hand-forged metal works of Julia Keilowa; Kazimierz Zembrzuski's PM36 steam engine; Marian Sigmund's Bent Furniture chairs; the elegant animal ceramics of Mieczylaw Naruszewicz; and the women's fashionwear of Jerzy Antkowiak.

The original edition of this ambitious reference was published in hardcover in 1998, in two oversize volumes (10x13"). This edition combines the two volumes into one; it's paperbound ("flexi-cover"--the paper has a plastic coating), smaller (8x10", and affordable for art book buyers with shallower pockets--none of whom should pass it by. The scope is encyclopedic: half the work (originally the first volume) is devoted to painting; the other half to sculpture, new media, and photography. Chapters are arranged thematically, and each page displays several examples (in color) of work under discussion. The final section, a lexicon of artists, includes a small bandw photo of each artist, as well as biographical information and details of work, writings, and exhibitions. Ruhrberg and the three other authors are veteran art historians, curators, and writers, as is editor Walther. c. Book News Inc.

Originally published in 1941, this book presents a comprehensive history of Poland from 1697 to 1935. The text was begun on the initiative of the renowned Cambridge historian Harold Temperley (1879-1939), who arranged numerous meetings with Polish and British historians in relation to the project, and was completed following his death. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Poland and European history.

"Cavanaugh's scholarship is distinguished by several qualities: detailed knowledge, a rare comparative awareness of adjacent disciplines, and of course, a substantial, synthetic knowledge of modern artistic developments in Western Europe and the U.S. Out Looking In will be relevant to a large and varied public."--John E. Bowlt, author of Forbidden Art: Soviet Nonconformist Art, 1956-1988 "This is an essential book for scholars of modernism who are eager, in the wake of post-structuralist and post-modernist reevaluations of the construction of modernism's history, to broaden discussions beyond a narrow French orientation. It will serve as an important stimulus for rethinking European art in general in this period."--Linda Dalrymple Henderson, University of Texas, Austin "Clearly written and well organized, [Out Looking In] will be the indispensable reference work in English on early modern Polish art. Cavanuagh's treatment, based on solid research and critical insight, is illuminating."--Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski, Professor of Art, Queen's University "The visual richness and comprehensiveness of Out Looking In will make it a primary resource in the West for images of early modern Polish art as well as arguing for the centrality of Polish art to the discussion of European modernism. This is revisionism at its most insightful."--Wendy Salmond, author of Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia "This book goes a long way in correcting our geographically narrow understanding of European modernism. While arguing for Poland's place in the annals of artistic modernism, Cavanaugh elegantly manoeuvers between the sensitive issues determining national artistic identity and the international context of this debate."--Myroslava M. Mudrak, Ohio State University "This is one of the most important critical analyses of turn-of-the-century Polish art. Out Looking In will inspire a broad response from a wide international cricle of historians of art, literature, and artistic culture."--Wieslaw Juszczak, Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Letters and Art History Department, University of Warsaw

A compelling biography of the Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski that takes readers to Paris in the Roaring Twenties, to the front lines during WWII, and into the late 20th-century art world. Józef Czapski (1896–1993) lived many lives during his ninety-six years. He was a student in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Revolution and a painter in Paris in the roaring twenties. As a Polish reserve officer fighting against the invading Nazis in the opening weeks of the Second World War, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets. For reasons unknown to this day, he was one of the very few excluded from Stalin’s sanctioned massacres of Polish officers. He never returned to Poland after the war, but worked tirelessly in Paris to keep alive awareness of the plight of his homeland, overrun by totalitarian powers. Czapski was a towering public figure, but painting gave meaning to his life. Eric Karpeles, also a painter, reveals Czapski’s full complexity, pulling together all the threads of this remarkable life.