Historical Chopin Posters

“He knew how to solve art’s most difficult tasks with a mysterious expertise - For he knew how to gather flowers of the field, not letting the dew on them nor the lightest tuft to fall…
Through him the tears of the Polish folk scattered in the fields have been gathered in humanity’s diadem as a diamond of beauty, of incomparable crystalline harmony”.
Cyprian Kamil Norwid

It’s not only by the written word that artists have attempted to describe and explain Frederic Chopin’s music.
There is one other field of art beautifully picturing his music. The poster. Artistic miniatures playing a grand concert to honor the ingenious composer. These small forms are created on different occasions, for Chopin’s concerts, festivals, competitions, as well as exhibitions devoted to a presentation of the artist’s life and works.

The graphic designer’s fascination with the beauty of the music gives rise to works that translate the magic world of sound into the language of visual experience.

It is a difficult task to turn music into an image without losing the powerful emotions contained in musical notes. Music, which is believed to be the least tamed of the arts, inspires and finds a reflection in another dimension- poster art.

Depending on the occasion, the piece and the individual graphic designer’s sensibility, the posters that are created are color or monochrome visions pulsating with a richness of moods and symbols.

Poland, the land of melancholy landscape, romantic insurrections, the homeland of many artists creating music, poetry and painting is included in the world artistic pantheon. This Poland is also the place where in the 1950’s the artistic phenomenon known far and wide as the Polish School of the Poster came into existence.

Maria Kurpik
Curator
The Poster Museum at Wilanow, Poland

Presented below is an exhibition of posters given to the Chopin Society of Atlanta from the archive collection of Chopin Society in Warsaw, Poland.

Photographed by Derek Lukaschus