Alicia Senón–Llopis Golec

 
 
Doctoral Thesis

“The Polish Expositive Poster, 1918 – 1939”


 
Summary
 

In this doctoral thesis I will look at a topic that is quite unfamiliar in Poland as well as in other countries. In spite of the fact that Polish posters enjoy prestige on a worldwide level for their high artistic value, the posters from this country that belong to the interwar period of 1918 – 1939 are almost unknown of. Due to this fact, it was necessary to find information and analyze facts on this topic, which turned out to be of great concern.
 
The thesis is comprised of two takes. The first contains the theoretical part and the results of the investigation. The second take is the catalogue, which is composed of the images of all the posters analyzed, their technical notecards and biographical notes from their authors. The catalogue is presented in a bilingual version, Polish-Castilian Spanish, and with color images. In the second take, not all of the information is included about the posters or the authors due to lack of information.
 
Take I is divided into two chapters. The first chapter covers the introduction of Poland, its history, socio-political situation as well as the economic and cultural situation in the interwar period of 1918 – 1939 when the country recovered its independence. This is crucial information to understand the necessity of the posters’ creation by the Polish as well as their significance for Poland. There is also information about the different tendencies and artistic styles of the era, most of all in the field of graphic design. There is information about the artists, external influences and exchanges of ideas with designs from other countries. Likewise, definitions related to poster making, expositions and about the collections in which the analyzed posters can be found today are all included. Posters belonging to the funds of the following collections were studied: The Poster Museum at Wilanow (a subsidiary of the National Museum of Warsaw), The Museum of Ethnography, Arts and Crafts of Lviv, Ukraine, The General Library of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Krakow, The National Museum of Poznan, The General Library of the University of Marie Sklodowska-Curie and The National Museum of Krakow.
In the second chapter of take I the objectives, organization, process, methods and results of the posters’ analysis are all described.
 
The objectives of the investigation were: to gather information about the topic of study (publications and iconographic material), to study poster making and expositive panoramas and to look at the interwar period of 1918 – 1939 and its expositive posters.
 
In reference to the methodology of the investigation, we can highlight information collection fieldwork from different museums and collections and the elaboration of tables, sub-tables, graphics and schemes by the author. There was a problem with the definition of “expositive poster” and of “non-expositive” because it seems that such definitions do not exist, because of this; a personal and open definition to anterior modifications is given.
The analysis of the posters shows us very interesting facts about the interwar period of 1918 – 1939 and its poster making; i.e.: the majority of expositive Polish posters from the years 1918 – 1939 were posters of artistic expositions (58% of all the work studied) and that the authors of the posters were almost always men (93.4%). The majority of expositive posters of the era were designed by: Gronowski Tadeusz (6.9%), Tyrowicz Ludwik (3.4%) and Bart?omiejczyk Edmund (2.8%). The printing technique most used was lithography (54%) and offset in second place (24.7%). The size of the posters varied and oscillated between 90 – 100cm (54%) tall and 60 – 70cm (60%) wide; the smallest went from 21 – 30cm tall and 20cm wide. 90.7% of the posters had a vertical disposition. The colors of the expositive posters analyzed were: black which appeared with greatest frequency (in 67% of the posters), red (48.9%), blue (43%) and white (34.3%), and their usage depended on the type of exhibition promoted by the poster or on the taste of the author. The posters of commercial expositions were the most colorful.  In reference to the typography, the majority of posters were designed with the letters in only one color (39.9% of all the analyzed posters) and with different types of letters (fonts).  In the composition, the text appears mostly on the top and bottom of the posters (30.8%) or in the lower portion of the poster (26.5%) and the illustration can almost always be found in the upper portion (38.3%) or in the center (24%).  As protagonists of the illustration, things (objects) appeared with most frequency (58.2%) and people appeared with the second most frequency (44.2%).
 
In the second chapter of the first take of the thesis, the results appear of the analysis of related facts with the expositions, i.e.; the cities in which the majority of the exhibitions were celebrated were Warsaw (Poland) and Lviv (now Ukraine) and the majority of the expositions were organized in the years 1927, 1930, 1936 and the least amount in the years 1918 and 1939.
An interesting type of exhibition was the Fluvial Exposition, which spread across the Vistula River from Krakow to Gdansk, visiting more than 30 towns and cities.
 
The analysis of the promoted expositions of the Polish posters of the middle war period of 1918 – 1939 shows us an interesting panorama regarding the theme of the economic and cultural life of Poland that did not get left behind in Europe, despite enormous difficulties. Rather, it progressed by developing industry, economy and education and by enriching its culture and developing technology.
 
All the gathered facts in the study of the collection of 312 posters and 9 gathered sketches in this thesis gives us a partial analysis of the panorama of poster making and poster exhibitions through the years 1918 – 1939 in Poland. Although the collection from this time period is currently closed off and available for study, unfortunately only one part of the work that was not destroyed in the Second World War is available (and only the most interesting posters were kept by collectors or institutions of the era), because of this the information is incomplete. We do not know with certainty the quantity of posters that were created for all of the celebrated exhibitions.