How the Poster Became Art
What does it take for a humble street poster to be recognised as a work of art? For nearly sixty years, the International Poster Biennale has been a vibrant meeting point for artists and admirers from across the globe – but the journey of the poster from fleeting publicity to cherished art object has been anything but straightforward.
As the 29th edition of this celebrated event unfolds in Warsaw, a timely new book by art historian Katarzyna Matul, Legitymizacja Artystyczna Plakatu w PRL 1944-1968 (The Artistic Legitimisation of the Poster in the Polish People’s Republic 1944-1968), goes behind the scenes of the poster’s remarkable transformation. In the shifting landscape of post-war Poland, graphic designers mounted a spirited campaign to claim the poster’s autonomy and right to be counted among the fine arts – a campaign that would ultimately produce not just new artistic forms, but new institutions, and even a legendary creative movement known as the Polish School of Posters.
Today, the Biennale’s prestige is hard to question. Yet, as Matul’s research reveals, that standing was hard won, forged through decades of debate, political negotiation and artistic vision. The story of the poster’s rise is not simply one of images on paper, but of an art form fighting to define itself – and of the people who refused to let it be dismissed as mere ephemera.
Who fought for the poster?
Katarzyna Matul, art historian and former Biennale curator, has set out to investigate – within a broad ideological, political and even international context – the changes that not only elevated the position of the poster in the art world but also gave rise to the phenomenon known as the Polish School of Posters. This movement remains steeped in myth and has achieved near-cult status.
Cover of Katarzyna Matul’s book ‘Legitymizacja Artystyczna Plakatu w PRL 1944-1968’, photo: Universitas
I asked myself the following questions: how does a poster acquire the status of a work of art in the People’s Republic of Poland, and how does a poster creator become recognised as an artist? What effect does the new configuration of the political space have on this process – with its peculiar ideology, system, cultural policy, non-market economy and specific artistic circumstances? More specifically, how is artistic legitimisation and consecration organised? Who is responsible for this process, and what roles do different groups and individuals – artists, clients, politicians, critics, historians, museum curators, publishers, lecturers – play, each interdependent on the others? What ideological and artistic discourses accompany changes in the poster’s status? Finally, what type of poster has achieved the greatest acclaim, and why?
Katarzyna Matul
It emerges that the Polish School of Posters, together with the political context in which this art form developed, the struggle to secure its independence and artistic stature, and the unprecedented founding of the Poster Museum in Warsaw in 1968, are topics of international interest. The Artistic Legitimisation of the Poster in the Polish People's Republic 1944-1968 is a richly illustrated book version of Matul’s doctoral dissertation, defended in 2018 at the University of Lausanne. It is also her second publication – her first, published in 2015 by Universitas, revealed behind-the-scenes events surrounding the organisation of the inaugural International Poster Biennale in Warsaw in 1966. Both books illuminate an extraordinary era when, in spite of the political situation and through the sustained efforts of artists, it became possible to establish the poster’s place as a work of art. This enabled the development of modern and even avant-garde forms of expression, while also creating institutional structures in which the poster could flourish.
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A poster for a convention designed by Tadeusz Lucjan Gronowski, photo: Wilanów Poster Museum, Branch of the National Museum in Warsaw
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Tadeusz Lucjan Gronowski, fot. Muzeum Plakatu w Wilanowie, Oddział MNW
The origins of the poster can be traced back to the first half of the 19th century. While street posters and public announcements had appeared earlier, works in which the message was integrated into a dedicated artistic composition were a product of modernity, requiring innovations in printing techniques such as colour printing and the ability to produce large-format copies.
In the Interwar period, leading artists – including the avant-garde – took up poster design, opening the way for the medium’s further development. It was at this time that the foundations were laid for a completely new, original and unconventional visual language. The right to claim this heritage became one of the central demands of Polish poster artists in the 1950s – at a time when the communist government, during the socialist-realist era, prohibited references to the supposedly ‘incorrect’ achievements of the Interwar period, dismissed as capitalist, commercial and devoid of ideology.
Katarzyna Matul has identified three arenas in which the foundations for the poster’s autonomy and artistic legitimisation were established. The first was art criticism. Jan Lenica – described by Matul as a ‘poster critic’ – played a vital role here, devoting significant attention to the poster in his writings.
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Cover of the monthly ‘Polska’, 1975, photo: https://kwadryga.com/produkt/miesiecznik-polska-250-8-1975
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Glossy magazines in popular circulation such as the multilingual monthly Polska played a major role by publishing poster reproductions. Within the art world, the periodical Projekt, published since 1956, helped cement the recognition of the poster as not only an original work but also a thoroughly modern type of art.
The press presentation of the poster was closely intertwined with its status in the academic sphere. Matul compellingly reconstructs the atmosphere at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in the aftermath of war, when the places of decorative arts, graphic art and architecture in academic structures were hotly debated. In the interwar years, following the international Arts & Crafts movement, these fields gained influence, producing numerous important projects. After the war, however, their status was again called into question. Matul writes of the turn of the 1940s and 1950s: ‘At that time, two visions of the academy’s versatility were in conflict: one that prioritised graphic arts, the other that favoured the supremacy of “pure” arts, especially painting.’ The year 1951 proved pivotal, as Marian Wnuk became rector and established two ‘mass’ graphic arts studios: a poster studio led by Henryk Tomaszewski, and a graphic studio led by Józef Mroszczak. These two figures became central to the poster’s artistic legitimisation.
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‘Circus’ by Henryk Tomaszewski, 1961, photo: courtesy of Filip Pągowski
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Henryk Tomaszewski, Cyrk, 1961, dzięki uprzejmości Filipa Pągowskiego
Through her research, Matul demonstrates that the modern poster – and with it, the Polish School of Poster – took shape in opposition to, and in dialogue with, the strictures of socialist realism. It is often assumed that the celebrated, original Polish posters appeared only after the political thaw of 1956. Yet, Matul shows it was the very policies and imposed aesthetics of the communist regime that forced graphic designers into a multilayered, at times subversive dialogue with the authorities, aimed at liberating the poster from political constraints. The situation was favourable: as a universal medium, accessible to everyone, the poster was easier for the authorities to accept than, for example, painting – which was seen as more elitist. The poster, by contrast, appeared readily comprehensible to the working classes in both content and form.
From the street to the museum
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The 29th International Poster Biennale in Warsaw, photo: Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
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Beyond universities and art criticism, Matul identifies another domain where the poster’s artistic recognition took place: galleries and museums. Although the street, the lamppost and the bus stop are its natural habitat, bringing posters into the interiors of exhibition spaces was meant to assert their artistic value. This journey was not without obstacles – and even the artists themselves were sometimes unconvinced. As Matul recounts:
[Graphic works] were treated only marginally at the largest and most prestigious exhibitions of socialist realism held between 1950 and 1954, such as the Ogólnopolskie Wystawy Plastyki [the National Exhibition of Arts]. The exhibited works were divided into three categories: painting, sculpture and graphic art, the latter including posters. While some poster artists, such as Józef Mroszczak, presented posters at these exhibitions, others – among them Wojciech Fangor and Jan Lenica – preferred to show their paintings, drawings, gouaches or watercolours, since, in practice, those disciplines continued to hold higher status, despite the professed overthrow of the ‘bourgeois’ hierarchy of the arts.
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Poster by Wojciech Fangor for the film ‘Carmen Jones’ directed by Otto Preminger, 1959, photo: Wilanów Poster Museum
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Although artists did indeed make efforts to elevate the poster’s standing, acceptance in some spaces was slow, partly because neither curators nor leading experts were quite sure where the poster belonged in the museum context. Matul cites the case of Jan Białostocki, a leading art historian of the era, who himself could not settle the poster’s status – as an ‘ephemeral’ art, should it stand alongside ‘permanent’ art like painting? Białostocki felt this distinction was outdated, but considered the transience and reproducibility of the poster a drawback for museum display. There were many more twists and turns on the poster’s path towards artistic legitimisation.
Poster for the 1st International Poster Biennale, photo: CC 3.0
Despite these hurdles, the 1950s saw the birth of something which – as many studies have pointed out – was perhaps not unique in the world, but was of immense significance in the Polish political, social and economic context: the Polish School of Posters. This distinctive visual language and form of communication, with as many facets as its creators but tied by a common thread, remains a priceless product of the post-war transformation of the poster’s place in art. The International Poster Biennale – the world’s first open competition of its kind – was one result of this process. Its founders, as they themselves wrote, hoped ‘to confront the tradition of the “Polish School of Posters” with foreign works. At the same time, their intention was to fully showcase the poster as a vehicle for individual creativity.’
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The Poster Museum in Wilanów, 2023, photo: Wikipedia
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In 1968, the Poster Museum was opened beside Wilanów Palace. Matul ends her book at this point, regarding the event (alongside the biennale) as the culmination of all the post-war artists’ pioneering efforts to secure the poster’s autonomy and artistic recognition. The Warsaw Poster Museum was the world’s first institution devoted solely to this medium, a milestone in gaining artistic status. Yet its establishment can also be seen as the moment when the poster was placed outside ‘real’ museum spaces and flagship art collections.
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The Poster Museum in Wilanów, photo: Anna Cymer
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To this day, posters seldom appear at other contemporary art festivals – they are displayed in a separate context of their own. Each poster biennale, despite being a major international event, still displays the works densely and under diffuse lighting, quite unlike traditional museum arrangements. Although Matul’s book concludes in 1968, the process of the poster’s artistic legitimisation is, it seems, still ongoing.
Originally written in Polish, translated by Michał Pelczar, August 2025
