Vintage Polish Posters | The Rosemary Twig | Andrzej Pagowski

The Rosemary Twig by Zygmunt Nowakowski premiered in 1937 when it was performed for the first time in the Polski Theatre in Warsaw. Those ‘five scenes from the life of a platoon’ was based on the history of the Polish Legions created and commanded during the Great War by Józef Piłsudski. The play was performed as many as 157 times during two seasons. The Rosemary Twig was soon staged in Kraków, directed by its author. In 1938, it was also shown in Lviv, Łódź, Toruń, Katowice and Vilnius. The play turned out to be perfectly suited to the expectations of Polish audiences as it reflected their specific experiences during the Great War as well as the road to independence of Piłsudski’s supporters who were in power starting from 1926, following the May coup d’état. In communist Poland, however, the play was banned until 1982. The poster artist Andrzej Pagowski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1953 and is an artist specializing in graphic design and poster art. Pągowski graduated from The State University of Fine Arts in Poznan in 1978 and began to design posters, which has since become his main interest. In addition to posters, he designs theatrical settings, prints and catalogs. One of the younger artists of Polish School of Posters, in 1990 he created his own graphic studio, STUDIO P, which developed into an advertising agency in 1993 and continues in operation today. In 1992, he became art director of the Polish edition of Playboy magazine.^. His work is characterized by a “flick of the wrist” style, including spontaneous, handwritten details and typography. His art can be found in many European museums as well as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He also has had one-man shows in Stockholm, Paris, London and Warsaw.