Roman Cieślewicz (1930–1996)

The Poster and Graphic Design Gallery of the National Museum in Poznań gathers posters and items of graphic design, advertisements, and visual communication. Formally, the collection started in 1968, when a Poster Section was established at the Museum’s Print Room, hosting posters gathered intermittently since the early 20th c.

Poster and Graphic Design Gallery

The first works by Roman Cieślewicz to enter the MNP holdings were posters issued by the Wielki Theatre in Warsaw and film posters from the Film Lease Headquerters, transferred to the newly established collection in Poznań. When the then curator of the Poster Section, Zdzisław Schubert, came into direct contact with the artist in 1970, Cieślewicz, at that time living in Paris, gifted 131 posters (mostly works of eminent Polish graphic designers, e.g. Tadeusz Gronowski, Julian Pałka, Wojciech Zamecznik) to the Poznań Museum. Subsequent collaboration developed chiefly through letters. Cieślewicz regularly supplied further posters, mostly of his own authorship, including those published in France, the acquisition of which would at that time have been virtually impossible without the artist’s personal involvement. In total, the National Museum in Poznań received as many as 322 posters as gifts from the artist, including 253 works of Cieślewicz himself. At present, the Poznań collection boasts 481 posters by Roman Cieślewicz from the period 1950–1995.

The collection was extended by other graphic forms (poster designs, serigraphs, photomontages, prints, books), when after a solo exhibition “Roman Cieślewicz, Posters, Photomontages”, held in 1981 in the main MNP building, he donated to the Poznań collection 18 serigraphs and 35 photomontages as photographic prints¹. Ever since, the set of posters and prints has expanded, first thanks to donations of the artist himself and also thanks to infrequent purchases and exchanges with domestic collectors. At present, the collection of prints, along with designs and other forms of Roman Cieślewicz’s artistic output, is made up of 1,264 works.

The extant correspondence between Zdzisław Schubert and Roman Cieślewicz, stored in the archives of the Poster and Graphic Design Gallery of the National Museum in Poznań and in the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe, one can trace back the many years of collaboration between the artist and the curator of the Poznań Museum. Many of Cieślewicz’s exhibitions in Polish galleries and museums were held thanks to the commitment of a former curator of the above Gallery, who facilitated loans from the collection of the National Museum in Poznań and at the same time often acquired ever new works. Without these regular efforts the Poznań collection would not be that extensive. During one such exhibition, in 1993 in the BWA Gallery in Toruń, Cieślewicz recorded his reflections on the past. The transcribed text of the interview was to be checked by the artist and then published in a magazine published by the Poznań BWA gallery. Unfortunately, the interview was never published and Cieślewicz did not read it before his death. Some of the recordings, the artist’s recollections, were included in the catalogue of the exhibition “Roman Cieślewicz 1930–1996”² and offer precious insight into the early stage of the artist’s biography.

A major monograph exhibition “Roman Cieślewicz 1930–1996” (19.02–2.04.2006), held in the National Museum in Poznań to mark the 10th anniversary of the artist’s death, was another major step in the relevant research. The main exhibits included objects from the Museum’s own collection, adding to them selected works on loan from a few French museums (e.g. Centre Pompidou, Musée de Grenoble) and some private collections. Some works, made immediately prior to the artist’s death, were shown in Poland for the first time. These were, e.g. the Oséelisques photomontages, the Petites Images collages, and a few earlier unknown archival illustrations from the time Cieślewicz worked for Elle magazine. An extensive catalogue accompanying the exhibition included texts by different authors and a complete list of the works on display, along with illustrations and bibliographic records³. The exhibition, its launch attended by Polish and international artists, scholars, collectors, and friends of Roman Cieślewicz, was accompanied by an extensive programme of related events held in several Poznań galleries under the collective title “Around Cieślewicz”.

At that time, in March 2006, a big auction of Roman Cieślewicz’s works took place in the Calmels Cohen auction house in Paris. The event fetched a number of original poster and illustration designs and photomontages from the artist’s studio and archive⁴. Regrettably, the National Museum in Poznań did not take part in the auction and did not manage to acquire new works for its holdings. Still, the Wielkopolska Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts (Wielkopolskie Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych), which bought thirteen items, offered them to the MNP as a deposit.

Later on, the Gallery of Poster Graphic Design of the National Museum in Poznań continued to collect information about Roman Cieślewicz’s output, even though studies were not thorough enough without access to his private archive. The artist’s widow Chantal Petit-Cieslewicz donated it in its entirety to a professional institution that specialises in archiving, i.e. the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herbe near Caen. IMEC offers ideal conditions for studies yet is hardly accessible to Polish researchers due to its distance and the costs involved.

Thanks to a one-month research grant on cultural heritage abroad (“Documenting the archive of Roman Cieślewicz, 1930–1996, an eminent Polish graphic designer”), we first reached IMEC in 2014. The task consisted of conducting a query, preparing working documentation and inventorying the artist’s archive. Thanks to this preliminary assessment, it was possible for the first time to prepare general lists of the contents of several hundred cardboard boxes stored there⁵, while the working photographic material gathered then furthered subsequent studies in Poznań. This catalogue is a second part of the project that documents Roman Cieślewicz’s estate.

Regular acquisitions of the artist’s works still during his lifetime and studies begun upon his death, have made the National Museum in Poznań a host of the most numerous and representative collection of Cieślewicz’s art, unmatched by any other museum institution in Poland and abroad.

The poster division within this collection reflects the entire period of the artist’s activity, while the section of prints, photomontages, publication projects, and illustrations was significantly extended in 2024 with works purchased from and donated by Chantal Petit-Cieslewicz. As a result of this important addition of poster designs, photomontages, and original publication layouts from the time not earlier represented in Polish collections, the National Museum in Poznań is the major centre of studies on Roman Cieślewicz’s oeuvre.

The set of works by Cieślewicz, along with the documentation of the relevant archival records, is a major element of the collection of the Poster and Graphic Design Gallery of the National Museum in Poznań. Hosting the work of eminent Polish poster masters – apart from Cieślewicz e.g. Jan Lenica, Jan Młodożeniec, and Waldemar Świerzy – and the related archival records, significantly extends the knowledge of the history of design in Poland.