The artist Ryszard Kaja created between 2012–2019 at the invitation of the Polish Poster Gallery in Wrocław an exceptional series of posters dedicated to the geographical and cultural diversity of Poland. The result was an unconventional way of promoting different areas and peculiarities of Poland, avoiding any kind of pathetic clichés and messages but communicating warmly, discreetly and often times humorously the pride and attachment to one’s own country. Thanks to the Polish Institute in Bucharest, we can enjoy a consistent selection of posters from this series, exhibited now for the first time in Romania.

Very coherent and visually unitary, with a simple approach, even minimalist at times, the monumental posters reveal a new side of the Polish poster school.

The kitchen tapestry (grandmother’s kitchen) entitled POLSKA, with the embroidered text „Nobody loves you like I do”, is the key to understanding the idea behind the entire series of posters depicting Poland. The homeland in the Polska series posters is feminine and we can confidently use the term Motherland to describe the Plakat-Polska series. We have no flags, no battles, no victories or martyrs here. We travel through Poland as if there was no other world to compare and compete with. Beauty can sometimes be noticed in insignificant things. Using the same graphic scheme i.e., a form of letters that is repeated both in the poster’s title and in the additional text, which usually represents the word Polska in various alphabets, the author recreated the whole spectrum of the stylistic history of the Polish poster. It is one of the dimensions of the journey in which Ryszard Kaja takes us in the Polska series. Even the first poster, Wrocław, in which the art-deco simplicity is combined with the object’s presentation according to the period corresponding to the poster’s style, already anticipates this story of the ever-changing poster. Ryszard Kaja changes the way we see the places we know. Kaja’s Poland is composed of linguistic and cultural identity elements that exist in the universal consciousness, but which have not yet reached the iconography of the posters. In addition to topics related to architecture and geography, there are literary, musical, pictorial, religious, folkloric or historical references. Plakat-Polska consists of 163 posters printed during the author’s lifetime. The completion works were interrupted by the artist’s premature death. This, however, does not change the fact that the series is the greatest original work in the history of Polish posters and the most beautiful description of our country through posters.”
Krzysztof Marcinkiewicz Editor of the Plakat-Polska series

Facebook event here
The opening is thursday, september 15, 18.00h