Roman Cieślewicz

zapis · slika

1. What it is — a poster for the state fashion house Moda Polska; photolithograph, 68.6 × 47 cm (MoMA 330.1961, gift of the artist). MoMA notes: after 1956 the authorities turn to consumer goods for foreign currency; the poster is a homage to the surreal fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (shoe-hat, lobster-hat).
2. Composition — a black plane; a woman's head in profile, turned left, cut from a grey photograph/engraving, placed in the lower half; on the head, instead of a hat, a huge red rose occupying the upper third. The eye enters the rose (the largest, brightest mass), falls down the profile, stops on the lips. Lower left corner: a red-and-white halftone ornament as a "dress".
3. Colour — three: black ground, grey head, red rose. Red is the only saturated colour and so the only one carrying "fashion"; the head is deliberately colourless — the model is a carrier, not a subject.
4. Typography — in the reproduction seen there is almost no text; if a logotype exists, it is small. Not verified against the original.
5. Message — three seconds: "a rose as a hat = elegance that's a little mad". Five metres: a red flower on black, legible from the street. There is no fashion (no dress, no cut) — there is a sign for fashion.
6. Why exactly this way — a state house with no range of goods to show; the poster must sell the idea of elegance, not a product. The collage is cheap (one photograph + one cut-out), and the surreal gesture is legitimate because it refers to Schiaparelli, not directly to the West.
7. What would kill it — a rose at natural size. The disproportion is the whole work.

Principles: One image, one word Historical quote as building material Colour as hierarchy, not decoration To verify against the image: whether the head is a photograph or an engraving; whether text exists.

zapis

1. What it is — a poster for the Warsaw staging of Luigi Dallapiccola's opera Il prigioniero (1944), Opera Warszawska; lithograph, 97.2 × 67.3 cm (MoMA 1787.2008). MoMA describes a figure bound in an armour shell, choking in an eruption of flame and blood — the pessimism, betrayal, and imprisonment of Cold War Europe.
2. Composition — a light, dirty-white ground. A figure in profile, turned left, shifted right of centre, occupying ~70% of the height. The body is an armour engraving (a cut-out from a 19th-century encyclopaedia, toned olive), the head bare, in fine engraving halftone. From the neck/mouth, at the join of head and armour, a red flame — the only movement in the image. The eye enters on the red, climbs the profile, descends the ribs of the armour.
3. Colour — three: olive (armour), black (engraving), red (wound). Red is the only warm colour and sits exactly where man and shell meet — colour as diagnosis, not decoration.
4. Typography — top left "Dallapiccola" small, "więzień" in a heavy, condensed typeface (egyptienne/grotesque class). Typeface not confirmed. "Opera Warszawska" small, bottom right. The text sits at the edge, the image holds everything.
5. Message — three seconds: "a man in armour burning from within". Five metres: black silhouette + red stain. The opera's plot (Spain, the Inquisition) is not shown — what's shown is a state.
6. Why exactly this way — a self-imposed ban on drawing: everything is found material (armour engraving + photograph of the head). The collage is honest about its origin; the armour is literally an old illustration, and this makes the imprisonment historical, not psychological.
7. What would kill it — flame in more than one place. One wound, one colour.

Principles: Analogy instead of illustration Colour only on the wound Historical quote as building material To verify against the image: whether the head is a photograph or an engraving; the exact tone of the armour.

zapis · V&A

1. What it is — a poster for Juliusz Słowacki's drama (1843) at the Teatr Dramatyczny, Warsaw; offset lithograph, 85.4 × 60.3 cm (MoMA 377.1963, gift of the artist). The MoMA label carries his quote about the "street image" and a note that under socialist realism a theatre poster was allowed to be more abstract and psychological than propaganda.
2. Composition — cream ground; a single black silhouette — a fist clenched over the crown of a bowed head/body — descends from the middle to the bottom, with a wide, blotchy lower part like a cloak. Behind the fist, above, a magenta halo applied by spray, soft. The eye enters on the magenta (the only colour), slides onto the fingers, then down the black mass. Top band: title on the left, author on the right, in one line.
3. Colour — two: black and magenta. Magenta is simultaneously holiness (halo) and pain (at the place of the head). The soft edge of the spray against the hard edge of the silhouette builds the whole axis of contrast: hard/soft.
4. Typography — capitals grotesque, two weights (Ksiądz Marek heavier, Juliusz Słowacki lighter), "Teatr Dramatyczny" small. Typeface not confirmed. The text sits in a band like a newspaper headline and does not mix with the image.
5. Message — three seconds: "a man holds his head, something is burning". Five metres: black stain + pink circle. The play (a monk-priest, messianism) is not illustrated; it carries a temperature — prayer or torment, the viewer chooses.
6. Why exactly this way — two colours (budget and technique), a ban on drawing (the silhouette is cut, not drawn), and censorship that tolerates abstraction in theatre.
7. What would kill it — a face in the silhouette. The moment an expression is visible, the halo becomes illustration.

Principles: Black and white before colour Colour only on the wound One axis of contrast To verify against the image: whether the silhouette is a photographic negative or brushwork.

Sotheby's · slika

1. What it is — poster for the first Polish distribution of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), made in 1963; colour offset, 84 × 58 cm per Sotheby's. Another source gives 83.3 × 59 cm and a print run of 8500 — not confirmed. The client is by all appearances CWF, but that too is not confirmed. No museum record found; Eye ranks it among his two "most famous" posters (with Katastrofa) and it was included in the exhibition Uncanny: Surrealism and Graphic Design.
2. Composition — white ground. Three bands: top a typographic block (actors' names + HITCHCOCKA across the full width), middle a skull from an anatomical engraving, frontal, with a concentric target on the forehead; bottom the film title and a photograph of a suit with a tie in halftone — the skull wears the suit. The eye enters the target (the only colour), falls onto the teeth, reads the title. Symmetrical axis, but the target is pushed slightly above the centre of the skull — it spins.
3. Colour — black on white + three colours only in the target: blue, green, red rings. Colour is concentrated on one spot and that spot is vertigo. Everything else is engraving and halftone.
4. Typography — HITCHCOCKA in a massive slab capitals of clarendon class, actors' names in heavy grotesque, film title in condensed grotesque. Three type registers, all "fairground", like a 19th-century circus poster — deliberate, alongside the engraving. Typefaces not confirmed.
5. Message — three seconds: "death with a target on the forehead, in a suit". Five metres: black skull + colourful target. Sotheby's calls it a "bizarre" interpretation of the film — it isn't: Vertigo is a film about a man looking at a dead woman, and about a spiral; Cieślewicz took the spiral (Bass's title-sequence motif) and death and fused them into one body. This is Bass's Vertigo retold as collage.
6. Why exactly this way — the Polish distributor has no photos of the actors nor rights to the American key-art; the designer has an engraving, a repro camera, and three colours. Constraint produces an icon.
7. What would kill it — a photograph of Kim Novak instead of the skull. It would become an American poster, and a worse one.

Principles: Historical quote as building material (engraving + fairground typography + optical target — three unrelated sources) Black and white before colour Analogy instead of illustration To verify against the image: the exact number of rings in the target and the colours; the technique of the lower halftone (photo or engraving).

zapis

1. What it is — poster from the state circus series (ZPR, via WAG — client to verify), lithograph, 99.1 × 68.6 cm (MoMA 352.2014, gift of the artist). The CYRK series is a Polish institution: same title, dozens of authors, never a programme, always an auteur image.
2. Composition — black plane to the edges, with a rough, brush-stroke border. Top left a white oval spotlight beam with the word CYRK; left of centre a tiny white silhouette of an acrobat in flight, on the diagonal; bottom right a second, smaller light oval (another spotlight or net). The eye travels: spotlight → acrobat → lower oval — the trajectory of the leap. The figure occupies perhaps 8% of the surface — the emptiness is the arena.
3. Colour — black, white, and on the acrobat three spots: yellow, green, magenta. Colour is only on the body in flight; everything else is darkness. The cheapest possible split: one plate of black, three dots of colour.
4. Typography — CYRK in a Tuscan circus serif with ornament, inside the oval — the typeface is a costume, not information (not confirmed).
5. Message — three seconds: "someone is flying through the dark". Five metres: a white dot in black. The circus is not depicted (no tent, no clown, no lion) — what is depicted is the moment of the circus: fear and light.
6. Why exactly this way — the CYRK series asks each author to state their own circus; this one is black. The black plane is both technically cheap and conceptually accurate (the auditorium is dark).
7. What would kill it — a bigger acrobat. Once the figure exceeds 20% of the surface, the darkness becomes background rather than space.

Principles: One image, one word White space as shape (here black) Extreme mismatch of scale (figure against the arena) To verify against the image: whether the edge of the black field is printed or is damage to the copy; the exact technique of the white oval (spray/halftone).

zapis

1. What it is — poster for Mickiewicz's Dziady at the Teatr Narodowy, Warsaw, 1967; lithograph, 96.8 × 67.3 cm (MoMA 160.2016, gift of Mirko Ilić). A connection to Dejmek's production (premiere 25.11.1967), whose banning in January 1968 triggered the March protests, is not confirmed; MoMA does not state it.
2. Composition — black plane; in it a bust (head and shoulders, frontal) made of a photograph of cracked earth, mirrored along the vertical axis — the cracks meet in the middle like facial seams. At the centre of the chest a black cavity rimmed with a red glow. The eye enters the red (the only warm colour), climbs onto the "face" of cracks, exits onto the title top left.
3. Colour — three: black, cream (earth), red (rim of the wound). The red is halftone or spray, a soft transition — the only soft edge in an image made entirely of sharp cracks.
4. Typography — "dziady" in lowercase, heavy egyptienne (Rockwell class — Eye lists Rockwell among his typefaces; not confirmed for this work); "Adam Mickiewicz" and "Teatr Narodowy" small above and below. Top left, off the axis of symmetry — the only asymmetry in the piece.
5. Message — three seconds: "a dead man made of earth, his heart a hole". Five metres: a light bust on black with a red stain. Dziady is a ritual for the dead — the poster doesn't illustrate the ritual, it is the dead man returning. The mirroring makes a face that belongs to no one.
6. Why exactly this way — one photograph (cracked earth), one operation (mirroring), one accent (red). Constraint: no drawing, no actor, no scene. This is the start of the series Figury symetryczne (1971–74) four years earlier.
7. What would kill it — two different photographs for the left and right halves. The mirroring is what makes it non-human.

Principles: Mirroring makes a monster Analogy instead of illustration Colour only on the wound One operation per piece To verify against the image: whether the red is halftone or spray; whether there is text along the right edge.

MoMA · Pompidou

1. What it is — poster for the magazine Opus International no. 3, 1967; printer Georges Fall; photolithograph 81.9 × 54.9 cm (MoMA 1788.2008) / offset 84 × 57 cm (Pompidou AM 2009-1-148, signed "R. Cieslewicz 67"); also issued in 1968 as a numbered screenprint edition (Georges Fall Éditeur). MAD: Korda's 1960 photograph reduced to a line drawing; "the absent gaze is symbolically exchanged for the revolutionary's name" (Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle); the dead guerrilla turned into a Christ-like icon.
2. Composition — red plane; black mass of hair and beard as a frame; inside, an orange face as a flat plane with no tone, facial lines in black; in place of the eyes »CHE« / SI in two lines. Magenta star on the beret, magenta shoulder bottom left. Frontal, symmetrical, the face occupies ~60% of the width. The eye enters the word (darkest on lightest), then the star, then the beard.
3. Colour — four flats: red, black, orange, magenta. No tone, no halftone — everything is a cut shape. Red/orange/magenta are adjacent on the colour wheel, so they vibrate at the edge (an op-art effect MAD cites as one of his tools); black settles them.
4. Typography — heavy, condensed egyptienne/grotesque with angular quotation marks »« (Berthold Block class — Eye lists it as a favourite typeface, Fonts In Use confirms it only on a 1993 poster; not confirmed for this work). The word physically stands in for the eyes, the same width as the gaze.
5. Message — three seconds: "Che, yes". Five metres: face + word, legible even without eyes — precisely because of that. The poster says the name has replaced the man; this is affirmation and critique at once, and that is what sets it apart from Fitzpatrick's Che of the same year.
6. Why exactly this way — an art magazine in Paris in 1967, a year before May; Korda's is the one image everyone knows. The only intervention that adds rather than decorates is a subtraction — of the gaze.
7. What would kill it — eyes. Restoring the eyes turns it into a T-shirt.

Principles: Text where the gaze was One image, one word Flat colour reads at distance Black and white before colour (the silhouette holds even without colour) To verify against the image: the exact shade of orange; whether there is more text along the edge (Opus International).

slika

1. What it is — cover of the monthly magazine Ty i ja ("Luty" = February; issue number and year 1968 per the cover masthead), offset. Magazine format not confirmed. Cieślewicz was art director 1959–62; a 1968 cover means he was still working for them from Paris, but that circumstance is not confirmed. No museum record.
2. Composition — white ground; a woman's leg, from knee to thigh, in a coarsely enlarged halftone (dot ~1 cm at this size), diagonally across the full page; on the knee, as if on a slope, a tiny skier in black silhouette. Above, "ty i ja" in enormous lowercase, to its left a table of contents in a framed table. Bottom left a coloured patch (pink/orange). The eye enters the title, slides down the leg with the skier — the poster is a ski run.
3. Colour — black and white + one coloured patch in the corner, like a remnant of a "real" cover; here colour is a joke at fashion's expense, not a hierarchy.
4. Typography — "ty i ja" in heavy grotesque lowercase, full page width, letters spaced out. Not confirmed whether the words are actually spaced or whether this is produced by the halftone itself. The contents table in tiny serif — a 1:30 contrast.
5. Message — three seconds: "skier on a knee". Five metres: a black diagonal of dots + title. Up close the leg dissolves into dots and you see print, not skin — the enlarged halftone as an argument: you are looking at the medium, not the woman.
6. Why exactly this way — a repro camera and one photograph; the skier is cut from another. The mismatch of scale is Matter's trick (Herbert Matter, Swiss tourism posters of the 1930s), but Matter is selling a mountain, Cieślewicz is selling a magazine about couples and simultaneously showing that the image of a woman is made of dots.
7. What would kill it — a fine halftone. Once the dot disappears, all that's left is the leg and the skier — a gag, without a thesis.

Principles: Legibility at the edge Extreme mismatch of scale Cheap technique as language One operation per piece (enlarge) To verify against the image: the issue number and year on the cover; whether the halftone is photographic or hand-augmented (Eye: with a marker).

zapis

1. What it is — advertising poster for the photo magazine Zoom (publisher Georges Fall), 1971; screenprint mounted on board, 101 × 71.2 cm (Pompidou AM 2009-1-156, signature "R. Cieslewicz 71"). MAD: a portrait surgically cut and assembled into a cyclops; Cieślewicz defines the graphic designer as a "retina guide" against image saturation. Wlassikoff: the point where he crosses from advertising into authorial work.
2. Composition — black and white, white border; bust of a man in a suit, frontal, head mirrored so that the two profiles meet in one eye in the middle of the forehead; below the eye the nose and mouth doubled into a symmetrical seam. Everything in coarse halftone. Text below, centred, small, three lines. The eye goes into the eye — and stays there; nothing else in the image has a right to be looked at.
3. Colour — none. Black and white in halftone; grey doesn't exist as a tone but as dot density. For a poster against "eye pollution", colour would be pollution.
4. Typography — book serif, small, centred, three lines: "Zoom / contre la pollution / de l'oeil". The caption is not confirmed against the image. The text is a caption under the image, like in an anatomical atlas — cold.
5. Message — three seconds: "a man with one eye looks at the viewer". Five metres: black symmetrical mass + white dot of the eye. The thesis is literal: one eye = reduction, against too many images. The poster is an advertisement that speaks against advertising, and without irony in its form.
6. Why exactly this way — one photograph, one operation (mirroring around the axis through the eye), one technique (halftone). Screenprint on board = exhibition object, not a street poster; Fall also published it as an edition.
7. What would kill it — fine tone instead of halftone. The cyclops would become horror; the halftone keeps it in the category of printed image, that is, of argument.

Principles: Mirroring makes a monster Legibility at the edge One operation per piece Cheap technique as language To verify against the image: whether the eye is mirrored or one is original; the width of the white frame.