Books at the Museum. Graphic Designers. A Meeting with Alicja Kobza

Karakter Publishing House and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invite you to the Warsaw premiere of Alicja Kobza’s book *Graficzki*. Klaudia Obrębska will moderate a conversation with the author.

 

 

ABOUT THE BOOK
They designed posters, book and vinyl record covers, logos, packaging, and advertising materials. The period of their most intense professional activity coincided with the times of the Polish People’s Republic. Well-educated, talented, hardworking. Why haven’t their names gone down in the history of Polish graphic design?

For many years, Alicja Kobza collected archival materials and reconstructed the lives of these designers. She spoke with the book’s subjects, their colleagues, and their families. She examined their body of work, trying to understand the reasons why their creativity had been overlooked or disregarded until now, and why, when discussing the history of Polish graphic design, we can only name their male colleagues, partners, and husbands. In the book, she tells the stories of twenty-seven female artists and presents her own selection of their designs. She sheds light on the realities of their work, the dilemmas they faced, and the difficulties they had to overcome. She shows how their styles evolved and what they contributed to the world of graphic design.

This visually appealing and, at the same time, substantively pioneering work restores to us an erased part of our history—the history of the People’s Republic of Poland, the history of commercial art, and herstory.

 

 

 

Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund—a state-run special-purpose fund.
Produced as part of a grant from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage