Dutch Cultural Poster in the Open-Air Gallery
More than 120 posters by outstanding Dutch artists - Gielijn Escher and Lex Reitsma - will be displayed from 9 June until 9 August in the Open-Air Gallery of the Royal Łazienki by Aleje Ujazdowskie avenue.
The exhibition of the artists’ works will be the fifth instalment of the "Cultural Poster” project curated by a well known Polish poster artist living in France, Michał Batory. Each year since 2012, posters by two artists from a featured country have been exhibited in the Open-Air Gallery of the Royal Łazienki. So far, these have been: Poland, France, China, Japan, and Mexico
This year, the time has come for works of Dutch artists. However, as Katarzyna Matul - art historian and critic - emphasises, Gielijn Escher and Lex Reitsma do not follow the main currents of Dutch graphical design. - They both oppose the leading modernist trends which stem from experiences of graphical artists such as Piet Zwart or Paul Schuitema, and followed in the second half of the 20th century by the famous Wim Crouwel, founder of the Total Design studio - Katarzyna Matul writes in the catalogue to the Dutch poster art exhibition.
- Although Escher and Reitsma value the functional perfection of the works of those designers, in their own work they aspire for something else. The strive above all to refer to the content of the presented topic and to express a personal view by means of an original form - not so much an effective form, but simply an intriguing one. Escher achieves the goal with manually created typographic and graphic compositions which can be distinguished by colours shown on a black background. Reitsima mainly uses photographic material, which, combined with typography, produces an indivisible graphical and informational entirety - Katarzyna Matul explains.
The exhibition of Dutch posters in the Open-Air Gallery is part of the celebration of Dutch presidency in the Council of the European Union and one of the events of the Dutch Days in the Royal Łazienki.
