Henryk tomaszewski biography of christopher

Henryk Tomaszewski’s posters make him one of the pre eminent figures of post-war graphic design, says Agata Pyzik

Henryk Tomaszewski is one of the most outstanding figures in post-war poster design.

To understand how a Polish graphic designer became so renowned, we have to look at the phenomenon that was the Polish school of poster design, which flourished in the thaw after Stalin’s death in 1953. Designers such as Roman Cieslewicz, or the younger Andrzej Klimowski who migrated to the UK, took socialist realism’s simplification of visual codes, and added a new lightness to invent a style drawing in equal measure upon surrealism and dada.

The great strength of Tomaszewski, and of others associated with this movement, was that he could match every message to an easily understood symbol; his visual language could be read at every latitude.

Politics features prominently in Zacheta Gallery’s excellent retrospective to mark the centenary of