Vintage Polish Posters | Charlie Bird Parker | Waldemar Swierzy

Charlie Parker (1920–1955), nicknamed “Bird“, was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker’s tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker’s style of composition involved interpolation of original melodies over existing jazz forms and standards, a practice known as contrafact and still common in jazz today. The artist for this poster is Waldemar Swierzy, born in Poland in 1931. He graduated from the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in 1952. Subsequently he was Professor at the University of Fine Arts in Poznan from 1965 and Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1994. In 1992 the government of Poland issued a postage stamp to honor one of his Cyrk (Circus) posters, ‘Clown with Derby’. Swierzy is one of the Polish School of Posters’ most prolific artists, having created over 2500 posters. He employed unusual concepts with a variety of techniques, frequently mirroring Polish social history from 1950s through 1980s, with a myriad of styles: folk art from the 50s, pop art from the 60s, portraits from the 70s, and TV images from the 80s. In addition, his Jazz Greats series of famous American jazz personalities became so well known that he reissued them in his later years as signed lithographs. The series includes Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Charlie Parker, among others. He passed away in 2013.