“The trick”, Andrzej Klimowski says in a video for the Polish Cultural Institute in London, “is to try and find a symbol or metaphor that is a condensed form of the essence of the subject. At the same time you can’t give too much away because you don’t want to be literal about it. You want to whet the appetite and the curiosity of the audience.”

I am thrilled to have several posters — both originals and limited-edition reproductions — from this brilliant artist, who worked for the Polish state-run film distributors in the 70s and has gone on to create darkly beautiful graphic novels and animated films. He has also become a valued collaborator, who has welcomed us into his home several times to share his memories for a forthcoming documentary about Polish posters.

Born in London in 1949 to Polish parents, Klimowski trained first at St. Martin’s School of Art in London and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. There, he studied under the ‘father’ of the Polish Poster School, Henryk Tomaszewski, who was famously demanding, but taught his students, in Klimowski’s words, “how to think.” 

It was at the Academy of Fine Arts that he met the painter and set designer Danuta Schejbal, who was born in London and won a British Council scholarship to study Stage Design in Warsaw. The two went on to get married and collaborate on several graphic novels, including adaptations of The Master and Margarita and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

After working on theatre and film posters for the Polish state in the late 1970s, Klimowski returned to the UK, where he taught printmaking and graphic design at several art schools including the Royal College of Art in London. He became a professor in 1997 and still runs courses on graphic novel storytelling.

In an interview for the publishers SelfMadeHero, who have published several of his books, he described silent films and David Lynch movies as being among his influences, and his art often has an unsettling, dreamlike quality. “I communicate and express myself best through pictures,” he says. “They are more ambiguous than words and leave much to the imagination and scope for interpretation.”