Some quotes from an interview with poster designer Mieczysław Wasilewski conducted by Slanted Magazine in 2016:
“I am a child of war. I was born on the new years eve of 1941 and I liked to draw since I was little. My first visual memory from my life is the burning horizon in 1944. My father picked me up and showed it to me through the window. I was three years old.”
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“The poster, especially the cultural, film, or theater [poster] had its glory time not only in Poland, but worldwide. In many cities those posters formed a sort of living art gallery. These were ambitious designs created by marvelous artists such as Jan Lenica, Roman Cieślewicz, Wojciech Fangor, not to mention Henryk Tomaszewski, Wojciech Zamecznik, Jan Młodożeniec, Franciszek Starowieyski and others. Those productions, new every week on the fences and walls of grey, communist Warsaw and other cities, were like a fascinating, colorful gallery for me and made me want to study poster design and nothing else.”
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“I have to mention that I’ve been alive for quite a time, and I mostly remember the first period that ended in 1989. At that time, the cultural poster, in the very meaning of that word, ended together with the fall of communism. Whereas up to 1989, all of what we did in the poster design was free of the commercial obligations, so to say. This is why an average graphic, poster designer who designed for a movie or theater or circus or other events, was in a way free of the burden of commercialism. At that time there was a lack of all products – cultural and any others. You could make art for art’s sake, more or less. The sole fact of being free of this burden, that is carried by commercialism, allowed people to free their imagination, their creative independence, to make things for the use of greater values, ideals. To make it short: the designers were more independent in the act of creation.
Unfortunately, it ended with the end of communism. Today, mostly anything we do – let’s take a film poster for example – it has to be in the Hollywood standard: a photograph with typography underneath – that’s it. It is very rare that you can push through with an individual design that is your own commentary of a product such as film or theater, as this age is over.
It could be thought as a paradox as during communism we had censorship that tied peoples’ hands. But it is not true. The censorship mostly focused on political issues. If it was more of an ambitious task referring to the art sphere, nobody used to bust in / did not control that. The controllers wanted to have clean hands in case of political affairs. While the whole world of creative freedom was much bigger than today, the one who pays for the product can get right in your face, your creative domain. As Milton Glaser once wrote, the guy who ordered a design from him said, ‘Mr. Glaser, you should change the pink to violet here.’ And the great Milton Glaser had to honor his remark, as the guy was paying $10,000 for the project. I read it in Milton Glaser: Graphic Design from the 70s. Just to add apropos.”
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“Young people have to be taught a sensible way of thinking about an idea, about a concept, that is aimed not to the lowest sources so to say, or the lowest layer, but to bring each of the messages a little bit higher. This way the process of education will aim at an ascending function, instead of the one that favors the lowest taste.”
— (via)