Vintage Polish Poster | Urszula Dudziak | Waldemar Swierzy

Urszula Dudziak (b. 1943) is a Polish jazz vocalist. She has worked with Krzysztof Komeda, Michał Urbaniak (her ex-husband), Gil Evans, Archie Shepp, and Lester Bowie. In 2007, Dudziak’s classic 1970s song “Papaya” saw a resurgence in popularity in the Philippines where it was regularly featured in the local noontime TV game show Pilipinas, Game Ka Na Ba?. The dance was craeted around the song and has been featured in several news programs, including MSNBC, and Reuters. In 2008, the dance was featured on ABC‘s Good Morning America, where the hosts also danced to the song. Before the breakthrough of papaya dance in 2007, the song Papaya became a success in Brasil in 1970s as the opening theme of the original version telenovela Anjo Mau, produced by TV Globo in 1976. 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.