9 SEPT 1931 - 27 NOV 2013

Blog post by Harriet Williams, 7 August 2024

Waldemar Swierzy was a truly unique talent and creative whirlwind. He had a face which exuded warmth, and a great sense of humour which shines through in his work. Over the course of his career he created more posters than any other artist of the Polish School of Posters, with around 2500 to his name. But his work didn’t stop there. Able to turn his hand to any style, he leaves behind a mind-boggling archive of original drawings, paintings, book covers and album designs.

We had the great pleasure of visiting Waldemar Swierzy’s son-in-law Boleslaw and grandson Janek in Warsaw earlier this year. To say we were overwhelmed by the body of his work in their family archives would be an understatement.

As soon as we entered the flat we were delighted to find the walls covered in his work. One wall was covered entirely of portraits of his family who he adored; including highly accomplished and witty pastiches of well-known masterpieces. Swierzy’s family edition of the ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ hangs above his portrait of Janek and next to another reworked classic. Not many people could churn these out on a whim!

It’s no exaggeration to cite Waldemar Swierzy as an absolute master. When it comes to poster designs, Swierzy was not only prolific but he is also responsible for some of the 20th century’s most iconic designs.

Swierzy’s poster for the Polish cinema release of the 1969 John Schlesinger film ‘Midnight Cowboy’ is very rare and a highly sought after collector’s piece. Swierzy’s name may not be well known, but look no further than the album cover design for ‘Cocoa Sugar’ by The Young Fathers to see how his work has subconsciously infiltrated modern popular culture.

One of the reasons Swierzy produced so much was that he started incredibly young. Whilst working as a runner at an advertising agency in Katowice he also carried a bucket of glue for his gaffer who pasted up posters all over town. He was 15 years old when he found out that Katowice was opening an art school.

“I became its youngest student. In the devastated Poland of that time there were a lot of fenced off bomb sites. And these were pasted over with posters, designed by such people as Henryk Tomaszewski. My pals and I decided we weren’t going to wait around, like painters, until the paint was dry and then hope that somebody would exhibit us. Better to have 10,000 copies instantly posted up everywhere, from small villages to the city of Warsaw”.

Swierzy graduated from Professor Jozef Mroszczak’s graphic studio with honors in 1952. He lived his whole life as an artist and never stopped creating.

Along with chests full of posters and walls full of framed delights, here are some of the other treasures that we found. There were boxes and boxes of beautiful original drawings and paintings. Bright, bold, witty, glorious sketches which show his versatility and joie de vivre.

There were a series of wonderful mini lithographs from an exhibition of Swierzy’s work in Vegas in the early 2000s. The works playfully portrayed gamblers and gangsters, with seemingly organic and carefree paint marks coming together to create powerful images which capture the mood of his subjects and brim with expressive energy.

“"I like how they dressed, how they moved, their guns and their beautiful cars."

Swierzy was different to other artists at the time who were establishing their own distinct style. He would adapt his style depending on the subject.

“The most important thing in a poster is its subject. Poster design is really the art of subject matter and every designer knows this, because it constitutes the overriding creative principle in this field of graphics. All other values - technical, artistic - constitute merely further consequences flowing from that primacy of the subject”.

Swierzy embraced many different styles over his six decade career. From painterly, to limited colours with more graphic shapes, or flat colours inspired by pop art or forms inspired by folk art, for example.

He became very well known in America for his much-loved series of Jazz greats…

America fell in love with Waldemar Swierzy and tried to entice him to move there, but Swierzy always considered Poland to be his home. He grew up with very little and he was delighted to live a good life doing what he loved. He had no aspirations for glory beyond that.

Another notable and charming series of posters by Swierzy were for Warsaw Zoo in the 1960s…

Whilst designing numerous posters in the fields of film, theatre, culture, music and art Swierzy also worked on illustrations for book and magazine covers (Polska, Ty i Ja, Projekt), record covers, calendars, postcards and postage stamps. It’s impossible to do just to the breadth of his work and talent in one short article.

At Projekt 26 we are incredibly proud to be working closely with Waldemar Swierzy’s family to share special giclee edition art prints of some of his most colourful poster designs - which include film posters, music posters and tourism posters from the 1960s through to the 1980s.

We hope you fall in love with this legendary artist and wonderful human being, just as we have.