January 4, 2006
A Sampling of Czech Posters
The site "Czech Graphic Design 50 Best Czech Posters," put out by the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organization (JIDPO), exhibits images of some of the best Czech posters produced between the early 1980s and the late 1990s. More of graphic artist Čestmír Pechr's work can also be found here.
These posters are linked from the Japanese version of JIDPO's site, where they have a page devoted to international graphic design. One link in particular, "Graphic Design Brno 1997 Collection," takes users to even more images of Czech posters. Brno is where the Biennale of Graphic Design is held; I will post on the Biennale here at a later date.
Posted by at 11:27 AM
An Introductory Resource to Czech & Slovak Posters
When we began working on this project in the fall of 2004 (viewing the collection, getting a sense of what would be involved in terms of repair/restoration, agreeing on a metadata scheme, meeting with the digital services staff, etc.), I trolled the Web for any information I could find on Czech posters. One of the first resources I came upon was an article, "Contemporary Czech and Slovak Poster Design," written by art historian and former reference librarian, Anna Dvořák. The article is based on a lecture she gave at the National Humanities Center in September 1998, in accompaniment to an exhibition on Czech and Slovak posters at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. The article features images of some of the posters that were shown (largely from the collection of an American, Dana Bartelt, who has taught, and written on, graphic design and who currently lives and works in Prague as the resident coordinator of the NCState College of Design Prague Institute)--all of them excellent examples of 20th-century poster art. One of the images is of a theater poster, designed by Cestmír Pechr, whose work is also featured in the Winters Collection. Read Dvořák's piece at http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/ideasv61/dvorak.htm.
Posted by at 11:01 AM