International Poster Biennale
in Warsaw 1966
stannym ruchu, to obecnie nalezatoby dodac:
ruch ten ma olbrzymiq prqdkosc.
Plakat, skromny przedmiot naszego zaintereso-
wania, ma wyrazic to wszystko, co siq zmienia,
ma stanowic odbicie chwili biezqcej. Warto wiqc
zadac pytanie, czy plakat, jedna ze starszych
form masowego przekazu wizualnego wspófczes-
nej cywilizacji, nie znalazt siq obecnie na roz-
drozu, czy nadqza lub nie nadqza za zyciem?
Wrócmy do dwu sprecyzowanych kryteriów
wartosci uzytkowej i artystycznej. Konfrontac,a
dziet uwzglqdniajqca te kryteria pomoze odpo-
wiedziec na postawione pytanie. Konkretna ana-
liza pozwoli ocenic, jak plakat wytrzymuje wyscig
z czasem i w jaki sposób realizuje i przekazuje
zamówienie wciqz zmieniajqcej siq rzeczywistosci.
Sqdzq, ze wtasnie potrzeba odpowiedzi na to py
tanie, potrzeba oceny miejsca i roli plakatu, zro-
dzita mysl zorganizowania I Miqdzynarodowego
Biennale Plakatu w Warszawie.
Udziaf w I Miqdzynarodowym Biennale Plakatu
w Warszawie w czerwcu 1966 roku braty nastq-
Puj^ce krajeArgentyna, Austria, Belgia, Bra-
zylia, Bulgaria, Chiny, Czechosfowacja, Dania,
Finlandia, Francja, Hiszpania, Holandia, Izrael,
Japonia, Jugostawia, Kuba, Mongolia, NRD, NRF,
"There can be no fine, exploratory poster
without a wise and courageous client"
Walter Herdeg, Chairman of the Jury of
the First International Poster Biennale in
Warsaw.
The poster is a creature with two souls, or to
put it in less poetic terms, it can affect the viewer
through its purely functional, advertising quali
ties, or its outstanding artistic value, offering
a certain artistic experience.
Best of all, there are also posters in which both
qualities, the functional and the artistic, are
present simultaneously and with equal intensity.
Two qualities? Then there must also be two
criteria for their assessment. It is very difficult
to draw up a definite boundary-line here, and
even more difficult to state which of the two
qualities is the more important in a poster. This
is a real difficulty, not an imaginary one.
The world of today is being transformed so
rapidly and in so many spheres by science and
technology that we can hardly keep up with
the changes and retain them permanently in
our minds. Human society is being transformed
no less rapidly, and so deeply that very often
the contemporary decade brings more changes
than an entire historic period did in the past.
The thinkers of antiquity realised that the world
was in a state of constant motion; we should now
add this motion has a tremendous speed.
The poster, the modest object of our interest, is
expected to express everything that is changing,
to be a reflection of the present moment. It is
well worth asking: has the poster, one of the
contemporary world's older forms of mass
visual communication, reached a crossroads, and
is it keeping abreast of modern life?
Let us return to the two criteria: of functional
and artistic values, mentioned above. A compari
son of works according to these criteria will
help us to answer this question. A concrete
analysis will make it possible to ascertain to what
extent the poster is standing up to the race
against time and how it is fulfilling and con
veying the demands of an ever-changing reality.
I feel that it was a need to answer this question,
a need to assess the status and role of the poster,
that led to the idea of organizing the First
International Poster Biennale in Warsaw.
Participating in this event in June 1966 were:
Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria,
China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland,
