For over a hundred years, the poster has remained one of the most important visual communication media. It combines image and word, a synthetic form and a powerful message. It simultaneously functions as a tool for information, promotion, and social commentary. Its power lies in condensing ideas and content in an often limited public space.
Posters not only promote cultural events but also become part of them, creating the visual identity of institutions, festivals, and exhibitions. On March 14th, the Poster Museum in Wilanów will reopen after a period of modernization. The world's first poster museum will present, for the first time in the history of museology, a permanent poster exhibition with a changing exhibition, "The Polish Poster. Collection." This fact prompts reflection on this important medium in Polish art. The Polish Poster School remains a crucial reference and a significant piece of the history of Polish art, although it is also a very broad concept encompassing many names and personalities. Contemporary projects demonstrate how it has developed over the years and also evolved, taking on new forms.
Posters are designed not only by graphic designers and illustrators, but also by artists from other fields who, despite not having graphic design tools at their disposal, are equally adept at navigating the subject. Browsing through websites and articles about posters today, you'll encounter hundreds of artists and thousands of interesting projects.
Contemporary artists frequently undertake poster creations, treating them not as marginal utilitarian commissions but as an autonomous field of expression. The line between applied graphics and visual art is blurring today. Posters can therefore be a space for formal experimentation, a vehicle for critical commentary, and sometimes even a form of manifesto. For many artists, it is a democratic medium: accessible, reproducible, and capable of functioning beyond the gallery, in direct contact with the viewer. In this sense, the poster remains a living tool for dialogue with culture; it responds to it, co-creates it, and simultaneously promotes it.
This kind of original promotional project is being implemented by, among others, the Ludwig van Beethoven Association, which for over a decade has been inviting the most outstanding Polish painters to create a graphic design for Warsaw's Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival . Thanks to this, the annual event's new theme has already been explored by Zbyszek Rogalski, Agata Bogacka, Marcin Maciejowski, Mariusz Tarkawian, Kinga Nowak, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Agata Kus, Radek Szlaga, Tymek Borowski, Honza Zamojski, and Wilhelm Sasnal. The latter is known not only for his work for the Easter Festival but also for other collaborations, including with the Museum of Art in Łódź, for which he created film posters for Jerzy Skolimowski's film "11 Minutes."
The National Library, which organizes a literary picnic, follows a similar path. For fourteen years (2026 marks the fifteenth time), it has invited Julia Mirny to create a poster. The illustrator's work is rich in analog-style paper cutouts, hand-drawn typography, and dense brushstrokes. Each year, the artist explores a different picnic theme, demonstrating that even around a single event, the palette of ideas remains endless.
In turn, the History Meeting House in Warsaw invites a different artist each year to create a poster for the Heroines Festival. Agnieszka Polska and Dominika Kowynia participated in the previous two editions.
Institutions that particularly enjoy collaborating with artists are theaters, whose posters, not just posters but full visual identities, serve as posters for their programs and repertoire. For example, the Dramatyczny Theater, which collaborates with the Homework graphic design studio run by Joanna Górska and Jerzy Skakun, has such a distinctive graphic design with strong black-and-white accents. Another interesting highlight of the theater's programming was its collaboration with Bartek Arobal Kociemba. The distinctive linework, compositions, and color palette, bold arrangements, and figures appearing in works throughout the city, associated with this artist, showcased the theater's current repertoire. Arobal also created poster illustrations for other performances, including "Moles and the Birds of Paradise," "And Then There Were None," "Glissando," "Madame Bovary," and "Apocalypse Square."
The poster as a form of social engagement
Among the artists who find fulfillment in posters, there is no shortage of those involved in the political and social situation. After 2015, numerous initiatives emerged that allowed people to download graphics for free and display them in urban spaces or in their windows. One such initiative was Demokracja Ilustrowana (Illustrated Democracy), which featured Łukasz Rajski's famous poster with the inscription "KonsTYtycJA." At the same time, graphic designer and illustrator Ola Jasionowska, who is today an icon of the engaged poster, was active. She created her most iconic graphic, featuring the red lightning bolt, for the Women's Strike . She also collaborated with the Youth Climate Strike, Amnesty International, the Periodic Coalition, and the Abortion Dream Team . Jasionowska's projects continue to appear in Warsaw today, as she works as a graphic designer for the Municipal Greenery Authority. Jasionowska is an example of an artist who is simultaneously a contemporary artist, creating original, critical projects, and a graphic designer who collaborates with institutions on commission. In 2025, six of Jasionowska's posters were included in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and a year later they were placed on permanent display.
The poster remains a graceful and compelling form, both inspiring and endowed with strong communicative potential. As a powerful medium, it combines a synthetic message with the intensity of visual expression, allowing for the condensed communication of ideas, emotions, and positions. For many contemporary artists who work in other media, creating a poster brings a sense of particular satisfaction and creative fulfillment stemming from direct contact with the public. On the one hand, it is ephemeral and inscribed in the rhythm of public space, on the other, it can remain long-lasting in the memory.
