Roman Cieślewicz

Tirage noir et blanc

For another edition of this photograph, see:
A.Avila, 'Roman Cieślewicz: graphismes', Cahier de l'Art Mineur, no.20 Paris: Limage, 1979, p.67, no.87 listed and illustrated
K.Stockman, 'Pan Cogito ou les tribulations de la pensée pure en terre polonaise', Nuit blanche, no.61, 1995, p.67 listed and illustrated

Best known as a poster designer whose influence on the history of the genre is hard to overstate, Roman Cieślewicz was the first graphic designer ever to have a solo exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in 1993.

When Cieślewicz arrived in Paris in 1963 at the age of 33, he brought with him an artistic heritage shaped by Russian constructivism, then still a dominant trend in the visual and decorative arts of Central and Eastern Europe in particular. Equally influential was the work of Mieczyslaw Berman (who first introduced him to the art of photomontage) and John Heartfield. Working with ready-made images drawn from contemporary French media as well as images of the Renaissance, he masterfully constructed photomontages with the simplest of tools - scissors and glue - to create an exciting new visual language which was to significantly influence successive generations.

He worked for major glossy fashion magazines, as artistic director for Elle (1966-1969) and a designer for Vogue, and was behind three editions of Kamikaze magazine, for the Panique group of which he was a member. The Panique artists combined the surreal with dark humour, a defining thread of Cieślewicz’s oeuvre. Cieślewicz set out 'to make public pictures that could be seen by as many people as possible' and in the 1960s and 1970s his images were everywhere in France: in newspapers, magazines, posters in the street. He also designed numerous exhibition posters and catalogues, such as the famous Paris-Moscou and Paris-Paris shows as the Pompidou.

Alongside his design commissions he made original, independent works many of which are presented in this rare group. The satirical photomontages Old Fogey in DIM Stockings takes an iconic painting, Ingres’ Portrait of Jean-Francois Bertin, and subverts it with exaggerated bulging eyes and contemporary red stockings and Party mischievously repurposes Bronzino’s eroticised Venus. Warhol’s influence on Cieślewicz - both exiles from Eastern Europe, born two years apart - led to the use of repetitive collage in his work in the 1960s. Cassius Clay is a striking example of this and Andy Warhol later drew Muhammad Ali in the mid-1970s.

With over one hundred solo exhibitions to his name, Cieślewicz’s works are today found in major international museum collections, such as MOMA, the Stedelijk Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou and various national museums in Poland as well as many important private collections.