Portraits of visual artists
Wojciech Zamecznik’s portraits of visual artists feature mainly the representatives of the so called Polish School of Posters: Henryk Tomaszewski, Józef Mroszczak, Roman Cieślewicz, Jan Lenica, Jan Młodożeniec, Walerian Borowczyk, Wojciech Fangor, Tadeusz Trepkowski, Julian Pałka, Franciszek Starowieyski, or Waldemar Świerzy; other subjects include sculptor Alina Szapocznikow, installation artist Stanisław Zamecznik or satirist and caricaturist Eryk Lipiński. The portraits, depicting a close-knit community rather than isolated figures, were made from the 1940s through the 1960s in the artists’ studios or at exhibitions, such as in the case of a group portrait of visual artists at the Polish Industry Exhibition in Moscow in 1949. The abovementioned artists shared joint projects (domestic and international) and the fact of working for the design magazine Projekt, founded on the wave of liberalization after Stalin’s death. Their involvement in designing modern forms of everyday life and ‘resistance against omnipresent ugliness’ harmonized with the magazine’s mission statement: an ‘interest ... in marrying art with industry and craft, in the visual artist’s share in the development of modern urbanistics and architecture, in the creation of a new shape of life’. The portrayed artists were also active academics who run teaching studios at the art schools in Warsaw, Cracow and Poznań, where they popularized their artistic ideas.
Some of the featured portraits were later used in the catalogue "Polnische Plakat Kunst" [Polish Poster Art] by Józef Mroszczak (Econ-Verlag, Vienna, 1962).
