Maria Mucha Ihnatowicz’s work has a magical, joyful, painterly style that encapsulates everything we love about the Polish School of Posters. Born in 1937 and based in Warsaw for most of her life, she trained under the ‘father of Polish posters,’ Henryk Tomaszewski, in the early 1960s. He was a teacher with notoriously strict standards, who rated her work highly.

She married fellow poster artist Andrzej Krajewski the year she graduated, and although her career took a back seat to her husband’s after the birth of their daughter, she also carved out her own path. She was the art director of the magazine Świat Mody (“Fashion World”) from the mid-1960s until the 1990s, and in addition to designing countless gorgeously colourful and playful film posters, was also known for creating iconic book covers for the state publishing institute.

One of a very small number of women who were integral to the Polish Poster movement, Ihnatowicz has been overlooked in exhibitions in which her husband and her other male counterparts are celebrated, although her granddaughter Maria Herman has been pushing to redress this imbalance, studying and sharing information about Mucha’s work.

I first met Mucha in the summer of 2021, and visited her Warsaw home several times over the following years. She was warm, lively and welcoming, and her home was a true artist’s residence, cluttered with paints, rolled-up posters, plants, religious iconography, books and trinkets. She gave us permission to reprint two of her posters, which are available for sale on our website along with several original editions.

We were so sorry to hear that Mucha passed away on 8 May 2026 at the age of 88. It is a great honour to play a role in preserving her legacy and connecting new generations of people with her designs.