The Bucharest Graphic Days exhibition includes a selection of about 50 posters published last year in the book Bosnian War Posters.

Daoud Sarhandi, the author tells us among others: The collection of posters was not easy, it took me and my research assistant, Alina Wolfe Murray, a year, between the end of 1997 and the end of 1998. The research involved countless travel trips through the war-torn country. Artists often worked alone and many emigrated during the war, taking the works with them. We only managed to find some of them. Very few printing houses kept copies of the posters they printed. But some of them guided us in the right direction. The posters were generally printed in limited edition due to lack of materials, which made our work even harder. (…)
Poster designers came from all sectors of the art community and sometimes from outside: designers who already worked in the artistic field and amateur designers who saw design as a way to express themselves or serve their cause. In extreme situations, the posters were hand-painted. For the most part however, they were printed by lithography or screen printing – the latter being more common – the lithographic plates being insufficient, and the electricity needed for printing presses sometimes absent. The screen-prints also had the advantage of being reusable – the printed images could be washed away, the screens could be reused for other works. For this reason, the original screens used in the poster making process were impossible to find. (…)
Even after the war end posters played a vital role in disseminating information in Bosnia, especially on such important issues as refugees, freedom movement, landmines, reconstruction, politics.
Exhibition organized with the support of the

EDITOR: DAOUD SARHANDI
COPY EDITOR: RUPERT WOLFE MURRAY