Roman Cieślewicz (1930–1996)

Roman Cieślewicz was born in 1930 in Lvov. He died in 1996 in Paris. A graphic and poster designer, he studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts from 1949 to 1954. After moving to Warsaw in 1955, he began working with, among others, the Film Lease Headquarters (Centrala Wynajmu Filmów CWF), the Graphic Arts Publishing House (Wydawnictwo Artystyczno-Graficzne WAG) and the Workers’ Publishing Cooperative (Robotnicza Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza RSW) Prasa. In the years 1959–1962 he was the graphic editor of the monthly Ty i Ja. In 1963, he went to Essen, and then moved to Italy, where he designed works commissioned by the Italsider Company in Genoa. That same year he emigrated to Paris, where he worked with several publishers and designed the layout of the magazines Elle (Art Director 1966–1969), Vogue and Opus International. In the years 1969–1972, he was the art director at the M.A.F.I.A. advertising agency. From 1972, he worked as a freelance graphic designer with French publishers and the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Paris. In 1975, he began cooperation with Paris’s Centre Georges Pompidou. From that same year until his death, he conducted a graphics workshop at the École Supérieure d’Art Graphique (ESAG) in Paris. He was a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and the International Center for the Typographic Arts (ICTA). The winner of many awards in Poland and abroad, including the Grand Prix at the 2nd International Exhibition of Film Posters in Karlovy Vary, 1964, and the Gold Medal at the 4th International Poster Biennial in Warsaw, 1972.