Nie^9
Tadeusz TrepkowskiTadeusz Trepkowski’s ( 1914 – 1956 ) 1953 Nie
(Polish for “no”) was the first Polish poster
to make an impact on American designers.
The ruins of a devastated city framed
within the silhouette of a falling bomb, in
its graphic way, was as expressive of the
horrors of World War II as the numbing
photographs of carnage published in Life
and other American magazines. Anyone
who saw multiples of this poster hanging
in rows on what remained of Warsaw’s
streets understood that Niewas more than
an antiwar image, it was a testament to the
redemptive power of art.
From the vantage point across
the Atlantic, Poland had resisted the
occupying Nazis only to be subsumed by
the Soviets. From here, Poland was a
prisoner behind the Iron Curtain, its arts
dictated by the constraints of socialist realism.Nie, the first glimpse that
many in the West had of powerful Polish poster graphics, was also the first
sign that Polish art was alive. Later, thanks to conspicuous exposure in
Graphisand the English-language Polandmagazine, Americans learned
that the Polish poster was not only alive, but was flourishing in ways that
far exceeded their own graphic arts.
It is ironic that a nation under the thumb of a repressive ideology
could produce a graphic style of such high quality and integrity. To
American designers, the Polish poster was the epitome of expressive
and stylistic freedom. In the United States, graphic artists and designers
had fundamental freedom, but even the most renowned were slaves to
client whim and prejudice. American business imposed fashions designed
to sell products in the competitive marketplace. Few deviated from these
conventions; experimentation was suspect. This isn’t to say that American
design was uninspired, but the Polish poster was poetry, seemingly
unfettered by agendas of state.