Polish Illustrators on the World Stage

Bartosz Kosowski, ilustracja, fot. dzięki uprzejmości artysty, default, Bartosz Kosowski, illustration, photo: courtesy of the artist, Polish Illustrators on the World Stage

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Who designed the face of The Witcher? How did Warsaw end up in Paris? Who turned down a proposal from The New York Times? We present the profiles of several Polish illustrators who are conquering the world of fashion, media, strip cartoons and computer games.

Gosia Herba: The American Dream

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Vignette for The New York Times, illustration: Gosia Herba; photo of Gosia Herba by Kasia Kaleta

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She worked for more than a decade to get a commission from The New York Times. When the art director of the American daily finally wrote to her, she refused. She would not have been able to complete the assignment on time, and she never misses a deadline. Unsurprisingly, the list of her clients includes periodicals such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair. With The New York Times, too, the timing was right in the end, and, by the end of 2021, Gosia Herba had designed 31 vignettes that appeared in the December issues of the magazine. The graphics were variations on the theme of dogs and newspapers.

Apart from magazines on culture, psychology and society, her illustrations can be found in poetry books, children’s books (including those she herself has written) and books for adults (for which she also creates the cover art), posters and websites. And she started with a simple banner ad for a neighbour who was selling Christmas trees.

The protagonist of her first illustration was Immanuel Kant. Other drawings she created as a child feature funeral scenes – Herba lived near a cemetery. As an adult, she added soothing blue (and other colours) and a dash of humour to the gloomy black. In Wrocław, she studied art history. She set up her studio in a room of ten square metres, where her belongings included an easel and a spinning bike. She designs each illustration in a sketchbook and modifies off-the-shelf digital brushes for her own purposes. This allows her to maintain her individual style.

Bartosz Kosowski: A poster worth its weight in gold

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Bartosz Kosowski, the artist's award-winning works: a poster for the movie 'Lolita' and a mock-up of the cover of 'Time', photo: courtesy of the artist

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He claims he has no sense of colour, but that he can do anything with a line. He would probably still be an English teacher if he hadn’t been successful in the visual arts. In February 2022, he received the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles’ highest accolade – in total, his fourth gold medal from the American Society of Illustrators. His other awards already count in the dozens.

Kosowski studied Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, where he focused on intaglio printmaking (etching and aquatint). He eventually moved to illustration and set up his own studio. He made headlines in 2014 when, for a film exhibition in San Francisco, he prepared the ‘Lolita’ poster for Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. His second piece of artwork from this period, depicting Vladimir Putin in a balaclava, was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was widely acclaimed. He received gold medals both in New York and Los Angeles. His most recent project, which also won him an American accolade, was a multi-layered illustration entitled Vanishing Dictator created for organisations supporting Belarusian journalists and families of opposition members arrested by the Lukashenko regime. Each donation caused another piece of the dictator’s image to disappear.

Film posters by Bartosz Kosowski [gallery]

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Kosowski’s illustrations can be found in magazines all over the world, from The Hollywood Reporter to The Economist, as well as in joint publications of illustrations. He has also worked for Apple and Netflix, and, because he specialises in portraiture, he has also drawn John Green for The New Yorker or Chewbacca and Loki for Disney.

Zosia Dzierżawska: Italian-style strip cartoon

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Zosia Dzierżawska, photo: Michał Waniek

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When she is given free rein, she draws without a plan: she fills the page with layers of colour (watercolours or crayons) one after another, without erasing anything. In the case of assignments for business clients, she first sketches in pencil, then draws shapes on a light-box in black crayon and colours them on a computer.

Her illustrations offer a narrative and thus, work well in strip cartoons. She worked on the first one (which she created from beginning to end according to her own concept) for three years – A testa in giù (Upside down) for the Italian publisher Topipittori (with whom Joanna Concejo collaborates). The comic strip tells the story of Poland in the late 1980s. It was created in 2014 when her work for Coloured Rectangles (Kolorowe prostokąty) was noticed in an illustrators’ competition in Bologna. A second accolade at a children’s literature trade fair came in 2016. Her artworks have also twice been recognised by the Society of Illustrators in New York.

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'Do góry nogami' (Upside down), Zofia Dzierżawska

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Dzierżawska started out as a translator and language teacher in Warsaw, and only took up illustration professionally in Italy. She appreciates teamwork, which is why, after graduation, she founded the illustration and graphic design studio Armadillo in Milan with friends. Her popularity among clients was ensured by the success of the book Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, which she co-illustrated. She creates drawings for books and periodicals. Her clients include The New York Times, Nobrow, Oxford University Press, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Bayard and Candlewick Press.

Jan Bajtlik: Vogue for Warsaw in Paris

Józef Wilkoń tutored him for his entrance exams into the Academy of Fine Arts. He was drawing and painting trees at that point. In return, Jan Bajtlik helped the renowned artist to assemble his sculptures. Bajtlik was a competition winner while he was still a student. He also started cooperating with major brands back then. His diploma thesis, on popularising reading, found practical application in illustrations in the activity book for children Typogryzmol distinguished by the Bologna Ragazzi Award in 2015. A year later, he presented his work at a festival in Paris. He then received the most important commission of his career to date – graphic design for the French fashion house Hermès.

The image of a surreal Warsaw, densely packed with buildings, plants and fantastical creatures was featured on the Animapolis scarf available in ten colours for the 2019 collection. The graphic elements were later depicted in enamel bracelets, and Bajtlik’s drawings also adorn fabrics, towels and ceramics with the Hermès logo. The collaboration has lasted several seasons.

This is not the only Polish touch in the French world of vogue. Anna Glik, a Kraków-based graphic designer, created fifteen collages for Hermès, which included accessories characteristic of the brand, such as leather belts, bracelets and watches.

Karolina Pawelczyk: The scent of success

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Karolina Pawelczyk, photo: Sylwia Mucha

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Olka Osadzińska, who has been conquering the world of vogue for several years, has been joined by Karolina Pawelczyk. Her colourful, vibrant illustrations depicting liberated, confident women have captivated American designer Marc Jacobs. Their collaboration began in 2019 with the limited-edition Daisy Sunshine fragrances. Since then, Pawelczyk has designed illustrations and blotters inspired by the floral flacons of several versions of the fragrance, until she was commissioned to work on a collection of all the Daisy launches to date.

Pawelczyk is a graduate of Central Saint Martins of the University of the Arts London. She has worked with global beauty and fashion industry and magazines such as Armani Beauty, VOGUE, Harper’s Bazaar China, Glamour Germany and Irish Tatler Magazine. She loves to surf as well as play tennis, and looks for courage, openness and optimism in people, which she then transfers into her illustrations.

Bartłomiej Gaweł: All the faces of the Witcher

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'The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings', photo: producer's press materials

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Even if not everyone is familiar with his name, his work is known worldwide – he designed, among other things, the faces of the main characters and the costumes of the elves from the bestselling Witcher computer games. Geralt’s face in part two (Assassins of Kings) had to be made more realistic, which required a correction of the anatomy (shifting of the ears). After a dozen or so drawings, a satisfactory effect was achieved, while the game cover itself had more than six hundred variants, and one of the initial designs was chosen anyway.

Gaweł’s computer game path was winding: he studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław and worked as a graphic designer in an advertising agency after graduation. He spent years working for CD Projekt Red and became the art director of the new Rebel Wolves studio afterwards. This was a team made up of the creators of The Witcher and Cyberpunk. He does not call his occupation art and believes that a concept artist must have a ‘visual library’. In an interview with Sebastian Frąckiewicz, he argued:

Every good artist has it [a visual library] in their head and, given a topic, they are able to create something interesting, combining different visual elements in an eclectic way. The richer the library you have in your head, the more films and images you have seen, the easier it is to become a good conceptual artist.

^{[Quoted from Sebastian Frąckiewicz’s book Ten łokieć źle się zgina. Rozmowy o ilustracji (This Elbow Won’t Bend. Conversations about Illustration)]}

Translated from Polish by Natalia Mamul

_{Sources: Sebastian Frąckiewicz, Ten łokieć źle się zgina. Rozmowy o ilustracji (This Elbow Won’t Bend. Conversations about Illustration), Wołowiec 2017; Patryk Mogilnicki, Nie ma się co obrażać. Nowa polska ilustracja (Don’t Take it Personally. New Polish Illustration), Kraków 2017; elle.pl; wyborcza.biz; bartoszkosowski.com; zozozosia.com}

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