Vintage Polish Posters | Zmierzch | Sunset | Holdanowicz

Isaac Babel (1894–1940) was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as “the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry”. Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January, 1940. Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), who authored Doctor Zhivago, wrote, “Yesterday, I read Sunset, a play by Babel, and almost for the first time in my life I found that Jewry, as an ethnic fact, was a phenomenon of positive, unproblematic importance and power. I should like you to read this remarkable play…”. The poster artist Leszek Hołdanowicz (1937-2020) was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He was one of the representatives of the so-called Polish School of Posters. During 1953-58, he studied at the Graphic Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In 1961, he resumed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw professors Julian Pałka, Wojciech Zamecznik and Jozef Mroszczak. He received his diploma under Henryk Tomaszewski in 1964. In 1970, he began teaching students typography and graphic design. Between 1974 and 1984, Hołdanowicz ran a studio of graphic design of elements and visual information systems. At the same time, he was the dean, and later, director of the Graphic Design Cathedral. In 2001 Hołdanowicz took part in “Computer as a Material” at the Graphics Faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, during which, together with Tadeusz Dominik, Waldemar Swierzy and Leszek Zbijowski, he presented his methods of working with computers. He passed away in 2020.