How to Sell the Avant-Garde: Poland’s Modernist Advertising Experiment

Henryk Berlewi, Prospekt reklamowy Czekolady Plutos, 1925, fot. Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie , large, Advertising leaflet for Plutos chocolate, Henryk Berlewi (text: S. Brucz & A. Wat), 1925, colour print, photo: National Museum in Warsaw

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Within the constructivist avant-garde movement, advertising was regarded as a bridge between art and the mass audience. Two poets and a painter decided to put this into practice. Rather than merely discussing advertising in the pages of avant-garde magazines, they set up an agency that combined modernism with marketing.

For an initiative consistently cited by researchers as one of the most significant chapters in the history of Polish avant-garde design, Biuro Reklama-Mechano, founded in 1924 by the painter Henryk Berlewi and the poets Aleksander Wat and Stanisław Brucz, had a modest body of work to its name. As far as the surviving documents suggest, it did not carry out a single full-scale advertising campaign. However, two archival advertising leaflets – promoting the agency’s own services and Plutos chocolate – were enough to secure its place in the history of Polish graphic design.

Prologue. A subtropical evening

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Henryk Berlewi, photo: Danuta B. Łomaczewska / East News

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February 1919. Two poets, Anatol Stern and Aleksander Wat, both not yet twenty, organised a poetry evening that would come to be regarded as the beginning of Warsaw Futurism. That winter, even before the young Wat’s literary debut – published later that year, Ja z Jednej Strony i Ja z Drugiej Strony Mego Mopsożelaznego Piecyka (I on One Side and I on the Other Side of My Pug Iron Stove) – the poet met Henryk Berlewi, a painter several years his senior and associated with the Jung Idysz circle. Alongside Jankiel Adler, Wincenty Brauner, and other members of the Łódź group, the artist was at that time exploring modern forms for Jewish culture. Having moved away from the naturalism he practised in his youth, he had, for several months, been producing works that revealed the influence of the Formists and featured elements of Cubist and Expressionist stylisation.

In the frosty weather of February (Warsaw thermometers were then showing an average of minus one and a half degrees), Stern and Wat organised I-szy Wieczur Podtropikalny Użądzony pszez Białych Murzynów (The First Suptropical Efening Hostyd by White Nigroes), marking their first collaboration with Berlewi – a partnership that would bear fruit in the middle of the following decade. The artist designed a typographic invitation and a poster for the event, emphasising the title, which sounds even more provocative to today’s ear (not at all because of the futuristic spelling). He interpreted it without excessive subtlety, in a design straight out of the infamous Palma margarine packaging – a stylised head of a black person framed by banana leaves. A few years later, however, he would become a far better marketer.

The texture of the entire universe

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Henryk Berlewi, Mechano-Faktura, Biało-Czerwono-Czarna (Mechano-Texture, White-Red-Black), 1924, photo: Museum of Art in Łódź

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Henryk Berlewi, "Mechano-faktura, biało-czerwono-czarna", 1924, fot. Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi

The most significant turning point in Berlewi’s career came during his stay in Berlin between 1922 and 1923. The painter encountered the latest avant-garde movements, getting to know not only their works but also the artists. His main companion in Berlin was El Lissitzky – thanks to him, Berlewi turned to Constructivism, abandoning representational art entirely for a time. For an avant-garde artist wishing to take abstraction seriously, developing one’s own theory is a rite of passage. Theoretical principles are a deadly serious matter – serious conflict can arise not only from disputes over fundamental issues, such as the social function of art. Mondrian and van Doesburg, for example, fell out over… angles. The latter’s introduction of diagonal lines into Neoplastic painting proved an unforgivable heresy to the former.

In Berlin, Berlewi laid the foundations for a theory that he would publish upon his return to Warsaw, in a separate pamphlet, Mechano-Faktura (Mechano-Texture), and in the Berlin-based magazine Der Sturm. The titular ‘mechano-texture’ was intended to be ‘independent of the whims of the individual, based on the precise and exact function of the machine’. In this respect, Berlewi’s explorations do not differ greatly from those of many other artists within the Constructivist circle; however, the distinguishing feature of his concept lies in the second part of the name.

Unlike Tatlin, for example, who in his counter-reliefs juxtaposed materials with contrasting textures – such as metal, glass or wood – Berlewi did not attempt to draw on actual material contrasts, but focused on the flatness of the painterly medium. In the process of its ‘mechanisation’, he sought to replace painterly texture with a system of equivalents constructed on the plane. He created a visual catalogue consisting of carefully organised and rhythmically arranged geometric shapes, patterns of straight and wavy lines, and dots, all rendered in a narrow Suprematist palette of black, red, white and grey, ‘which would contain within themselves a synthesis of all textural qualities, scattered chaotically across all objects in the world around us, across the entire universe’.

Theory goes hand in hand with practice. In presenting his theory of mechano-texture, Berlewi demonstrated examples of it at two exhibitions: in March 1924 at the Austro-Daimler car showroom in Warsaw, and in the summer at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. During this period, he also renewed his friendship with Wat and, together with Wat and another futurist poet, Stanisław Brucz, established the design agency Biuro Reklama-Mechano, which systematically employed mechano-texture techniques in the visual aspects of its commissions. The achievements of avant-garde graphic art and poetry were to be harnessed in the service of mass advertising.

Tadeusz Gronowski jumps out of the fridge

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Tadeusz Lucjan Gronowski, Radion sam pierze (Radion Washes on Its Own), 1926, poster, photo: Poster Museum in Wilanów, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw

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Tadeusz Lucjan Gronowski, Radion Does the Laundry for You, 1926, poster, photo: Poster Museum in Wilanów, branch of the National Museum in Warsaw

The mid-1920s were an ideal time to set up an advertising agency. During this period, advertising was becoming a professional field and was increasingly recognised as a form of art. In promotional campaigns, product quality was increasingly endorsed by celebrities, including poets. Julian Tuwim and Marian Hemar, for example, praised the reliability of Citroën cars. Zofia Stryjeńska designed packaging for Wedel chocolates, whilst Władysław Strzemiński worked on a book titled Zasady Kompozycji Reklamowej (Principles of Advertising Composition), which, however, was never published, and the sketches were destroyed during the war.

In 1928, Stanisław Zenon Zakrzewski founded the Polish Advertising Association, bringing together advertising agencies and the companies that used their services to bring order to the growing market. Despite galloping inflation, several agencies were already operating in the capital at that time, though none yet resembled the giants from across the Atlantic, where, a few years before the Great Depression, rampant consumerism had created ideal conditions for the development of the advertising industry. Just before the crash, American companies were spending nearly three billion dollars a year on advertising, and agencies such as J. Walter Thompson already employed dozens of staff. Meanwhile, in the fledgling Second Polish Republic, graphic design and advertising agencies were, in practice, mostly two- or three-person ventures, including Atelier Girs-Barcz, Graphic Atelier Mewa and Artistic Advertising Atelier Plakat.

The latter was founded in 1923 by Tadeusz Gronowski, together with Jerzy Gelbard, Antoni Borman and Jan Mucharski. Gronowski was the undisputed king of the market at the time. He created advertisements that remain famous to this day, including one for Radion washing powder featuring a black cat that jumps into a bucket and emerges snow-white from the Radion suds. Drawing inspiration primarily from French artists, Gronowski drew on Art Deco aesthetics and elements from Cubist and Futurist art, which he smoothed into an easily accessible illustrative style. In Poland, where simplified, geometric motifs reminiscent of folk art were then dominant, he introduced a more international flair in the spirit of Cassandre’s posters. As Antoni Słonimski wrote in 1924:

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In the morning, you wake up and look at the calendar – drawn by Tadeusz Gronowski. On the street, a few posters on every lamppost – drawn by Tadeusz Gronowski – encourage you to buy various items. You pick up a book – cover by Tadeusz Gronowski; you read a periodical – title page illustrated by Tadeusz Gronowski; you browse through Pani magazine – illustrations by Tadeusz Gronowski. And whenever you go to the cinema – posters and neon signs are by Tadeusz Gronowski; if you go to the theatre – set designs are by Tadeusz Gronowski. When I collect my fee for this article in Wiadomości – title vignette by Tadeusz Gronowski – I’m going to buy shares – designed by Tadeusz Gronowski – and board the first Red Star Line ship – poster illustrated by Tadeusz Gronowski – to take a breather and hear no more of this man…

The majority of these projects, not just those created by Gronowski, were based on a model that had taken shape across the Atlantic as early as the turn of the century. The earlier form of press advertising – informative, descriptive and based on the assumption that listing a product’s features is enough for it to speak for itself – was replaced by a persuasive message. A catchy slogan paired with an evocative image lures in the potential consumer, even before any concrete need has been identified – because, in the skilful hands of a copywriter, desire itself can be manufactured.

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Tadeusz Lucjan Gronowski, Papierosy Gabinetowe (Cabinet Cigarettes), 1931, poster, photo: Poster Museum in Wilanów, a branch of the National Museum in Warsaw

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In the 1920s, the persuasive power of advertising reached new heights across the Atlantic. If one were to pinpoint a specific moment in history when the soul was sold and advertising became a tool for creating artificial needs and manipulating desire, it would be this very period. The pact was signed by Freud’s nephew, Edward L. Bernays, who decided to use findings from research into the human subconscious to effectively instil consumerist desires within it. He succeeded in doing so with cigarettes, for example – he was the author of, among other things, the 1928 Lucky Strike campaign with the slogan: ‘Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet’.

It was Bernays who played a significant role in turning cigarettes into a symbol of the modern, liberated woman of the interwar period, enabling tobacco companies to multiply their profits exponentially. He was also behind the idea, readily adopted by other cigarette industry giants, of sponsoring research into the health effects of tobacco and citing this kind of paid-for ‘authority’. Thanks to his ideas, between 1926 and 1929, Lucky Strike’s turnover more than tripled, and the impact of the new marketing strategy – which made cigarettes an attribute of the modern, stylish woman – was also felt in Poland. The advertisement for the ‘women’s’ brands of the Polish Tobacco Monopoly (Pani, Złota Pani, Gabinetowe, Dames), with the slogan ‘Her favourite cigarette’, was, unsurprisingly, designed by Tadeusz Gronowski.

The language of propaganda

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Advertising leaflet for Plutos chocolate, Henryk Berlewi (text: S. Brucz & A. Wat), 1925, colour print, photo: National Museum in Warsaw

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Henryk Berlewi, Prospekt reklamowy Czekolady Plutos, 1925, fot. Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie

In interwar Poland, this persuasive style was therefore used not only by private companies but also by state-owned enterprises and the authorities. Take, for example, a 1934 poster by Jan Mucharski encouraging the purchase of electric irons. The slogan ‘The days of our great-grandmothers are over. Iron with electricity’ is illustrated by a striking image: a sleek new electric iron gleaming like an automobile against the backdrop of a huge, red-hot relic – an old iron with a slug, which looks here like a huge, puffing steamship. Mucharski skilfully employed a visual metaphor drawn from William Turner’s famous The Fighting Temeraire, in which a small, ugly steamboat is towing away a stately sailing ship. The campaign, which used such skilful imagery that even Peggy Olson from Mad Men would have been proud of it, did not, however, promote any specific iron – it was part of a wider campaign to popularise household electrical appliances in the context of the country’s ongoing electrification. It is therefore an advertisement not so much for the equipment itself as for the very idea of modernisation.

Against the backdrop of such large-scale campaigns, Berlewi, Wat and Brucz employed a completely different language – one might say, the language of distilled propaganda. If we were to identify the contexts most closely related to their work, they would not be the designs or projects of other small Warsaw-based advertising agencies, but rather the work of the advertising agency founded by Aleksander Rodchenko and Vladimir Mayakovsky. At almost the same time, from 1923 to 1925, two Soviet avant-garde artists worked as ‘constructors of adverts’. The poet claimed that what they were doing would be ‘the first truly Soviet advertisement, as opposed to those little heads, flowers and everything else, which is so offensive in its lack of good taste’. Geometric shapes and photographic collages accompanied slogans written in block letters, advertising cold meats, cigarettes and bread in such an emphatic tone that they seemed to call for a revolutionary uprising. ‘There have never been any better dummies. You can suck on them right into old age,’ Mayakovsky asserted, for example, in one of his designs.

In the advertising materials written for Reklama-Mechano by Wat and Brucz, this persuasion – pushed to the brink of self-parody – is complemented by Dadaist humour and a penchant for phonetic play. On the sixteen pages of the brochure promoting Plutos chocolate, printed in diagonal layouts with block fonts of widely varying sizes, scattered across the page around geometric, mechanistic forms in black and red – devoid of any illustrative allusions – slogans penned by Wat assailed the reader:

‘Tourists! Athletes! Travellers! Motorists! “Plutos” cream chocolate builds stamina, vigour, energy, resilience, lightness, freshness and strength – essential in the mountains, on the courts, on the pitches, in the stadiums and while travelling. A manna that you can keep in your pocket, and which will easily see you through breakfast, lunch and dinner.’ Or: ‘Steinach and Woronow surrender before the rejuvenating “Plutos” cream chocolate, which prolongs life, strengthens health, awakens energy, renews the blood and restores strength to the elderly, children, the sick, convalescents, the healthy and robust, the weary, the anaemic and the nervous.’ The linguistic dexterity and imagination of the author of ‘Piecyk’ are perhaps best reflected in the ‘Scheherazades of gourmet pleasure’ promised in one of the designs. The slogan ‘Sugar strengthens’, devised by Melchior Wańkowicz on commission from the Polish Sugar Union a few years later, seems rather lacklustre by comparison.

The race of automobiles

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Henryk Berlewi at the opening of the Mechano-Texture exhibition at the Austro-Daimler car showroom in Warsaw, 1924 / photo: Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences

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In the agency’s prospectus, the founders promoted its services in a tone straight out of avant-garde manifestos: ‘The run-of-the-mill layouts, banal copy, and outdated aesthetic embellishments that strain a modern eye no longer capture the attention of the reader, the viewer, or the passer-by. We therefore put forward a new slogan: MECHANICAL ADVERTISEMENTS. Advertising must be based on the same principles that govern modern industrial production.’ These principles boiled down, above all, to the economical use of resources – just as mechano-texture was meant to convey the character of each material, so too could any marketing content be expressed solely through printed characters, without any ‘hand-drawn or hand-painted elements’. Reklama–Mechano therefore ‘reforms the literary text of advertising towards brevity, conciseness and momentum, drawing on the latest achievements of new literature, and creates a mechanical style for advertising copy’.

Biuro Reklama–Mechano had its own address (38 Senatorska, apt. 14), a telephone number and a logo, and, as promised, was ready to accept ‘all orders relating to advertising’ – ranging from posters and printed materials to signboards and neon signs. Yet apart from two brochures (and individual graphic designs for covers or film posters by Berlewi himself), we know of no other works produced by the agency. The design for Plutos chocolate also most likely never developed into a full-scale press or street campaign, remaining merely a proposal. Although Berlewi, together with Szymon Syrkus – one of the pioneers of modernist Polish architecture – was commissioned to design advertising kiosks for the company during the Hygiene and Food Exhibition in Warsaw in 1926, no documentation of these designs has survived.

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Advertising leaflet for Plutos chocolate, Henryk Berlewi (text: S. Brucz & A. Wat), 1925, colour print, photo: National Museum in Warsaw

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Years later, Berlewi claimed that describing the initiative as an agency was a ‘commercial hoax’ intended to promote modern art to a wide audience. Milk chocolate was merely a means of bringing avant-garde art to the masses. The agency’s ambition, therefore, was to reverse the roles – rather than using avant-garde stylisation for advertising, the aim was to utilise commercial mechanisms to promote avant-garde ideas.

Whether indeed it was merely a hoax, or whether the projects by Berlewi, Wat and Brucz proved too unconventional for the realities of the advertising market to actually infiltrate it, is difficult to assess today. Certainly, the mission to promote the avant-garde beyond exclusive artistic circles would have been more successful had Reklama-Mechano’s activities gained momentum to at least the level of Mayakovsky and Rodchenko’s advertising work. Wat was reportedly set to explain the artists’ intentions in greater detail in an article he was preparing, Apologia Buchalterii (Apologia of Bookkeeping), but it was never published.

In any case, the establishment of the agency was undoubtedly linked to tensions between Berlewi and the Blok artist collective, to which he belonged, yet felt marginalised. The artist’s name does not appear on the list of editors for the first issue of the group’s magazine; meanwhile, his exhibition of ‘mechano-textures’ at the Austro-Daimler showroom took place exactly one day before Blok’s first show, organised at another car showroom – in this case, that of Laurin-Klement. According to Berlewi’s account, it was he who came up with the idea of holding an exhibition in an automobile showroom to emphasise the affinity between new art and modern technology.

According to Andrzej Wat, Berlewi did not join Blok’s editorial team because ‘he was viewed with reluctance here, primarily because, alongside his experimental work, he did not neglect “normal” painting, which brought in an income’. Berlewi himself claimed that the rift arose because Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower had appropriated his ideas. Although they all unanimously declared their opposition to the individualism of the work of art, the individual authorship of ideas was quite another matter. Berlewi was hardly a team player and intended to ensure that history would remember him as a pioneer. It is therefore most likely that Reklama-Mechano was a kind of response to Szczuka’s articles in Blok. While Szczuka included photographs of Laurin-Klement car adverts or a caterpillar tractor in his articles, Berlewi went a step further and decided to take on advertising himself.

Epilogue. Moda Polska

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Henryk Berlewi surrounded by models, photo: Edward Hartwig / scan from the magazine Ty i Ja, September 1966, photo: Wikipedia

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By 1926, the agency had ceased to exist, and Berlewi returned to figurative art for good. Two years later, he left for France, where he painted portraits, still lifes and realistic nudes. During the war, he fled occupied Paris and joined the resistance movement. He returned to abstraction and his youthful concepts in the second half of the 1950s, when Op Art emerged and ‘mechano-texture’ was rediscovered as one of its precursors. His youthful desire to be recognised as a pioneer was fulfilled.

Berlewi’s works were featured, among other places, in the famous exhibition The Responsive Eye at New York’s MoMA in 1965. The painter, however, had mixed feelings about this fashionable current. He was pleased with his status as a pioneer, yet, ironically, he considered Op Art too commercial. Declarations aside, Berlewi retained the flair of a shrewd marketer right to the end. In the 1960s, he entered into his final commercial collaboration, capitalising on his success in exemplary fashion – he struck a deal with Moda Polska, which launched a line of dresses featuring patterns inspired by his paintings.

Translated from Polish by Agnieszka Mistur

Language English

advertising company Reklama