written by Jędrzej Janicki (03.07.2020)
translated by Editors (02.12.2020)
The creators of the posters announcing the Warsaw Autumn festival very eagerly resorted to using highly geometric forms and abstract depictions1. It should not surprise, because after all how else can one think about presenting music?
Hubert Hilscher, Tadeusz Kulisiewicz’s student2, can doubtlessly be called a full-time graphic designer of the Warsaw Autumn[3]. He created posters for the 1970–1973, 1976, 1978–1981, 1985 editions of the Festival. The poster from our Collection (promoting the 1972 edition) is one of Hilscher’s most artistically interesting achievements. The main motif consists of seven coloured lines arranged horizontally (slightly straining the geometers’ patience, one can state that “basically” they are parallel to each other). Apparently deeper inside the poster, our eye encounters something like the shadows of each of the lines. This creates a mysterious spatiality of the work, which can be compared to the one achieved by artists connected with the spatialism movement (mainly works by Lucio Fontana). A slight disturbance of the rhythm of the line arrangement indicates the nature of the music presented during the Festival. After all, since its second edition in 1958, dodecaphonic music and serialism4 (for which experimenting and breaking the existing rules of composition are key elements) have become dominant.
A somewhat similar motif to Hilscher’s one, but in a vertical arrangement, was later explored by Jan Bokiewicz and Wojciech Freudenreich, who created posters for the Warsaw Autumn’s 1993–1995 editions. I would not be surprised if these two creators were inspired by Hilscher’s poster, which is in our Collection. Hilscher himself seems to be particularly fond of the orange, green and purple colours that also appear on the poster described. The artist returned to similar tones when creating posters for the editions of Warsaw Autumn of 1976 and 1979 (all three posters are also linked by a background in dark colours).
1 On the webiste https://warszawska-jesien.art.pl/2020/galeria/ksiazka-programowa-warszawskiej-jesieni-1956-2020 you can find programme books of the Warsaw Autumn Festival from 1956 – 2016 editions. It is worth mentioning that posters for this Festival were created by such eminent artists as Waldemar Świerzy, Wojciech Zamecznik, Jan Lenica and Jan Młodożeniec.
2 Tadeusz Kulisiewicz’s biographical note: https://culture.pl/pl/tworca/tadeusz-kulisiewicz.
3 See very interestingly described history of the Festival on the website: http://www.warszawska-jesien.art.pl/wj2017/60-lat.
4 As Krzysztof Baculewski writes about the 1958 edition: In hindsight, you can clearly see the change of the festival’s profile towards works created most recently and according to the most modern trends at that time.(editor’s translation) Krzysztof Baculewski, Kalendarium subiektywne sześćdziesięciu festiwali, http://www.warszawska-jesien.art.pl/wj2017/60-lat.