[DESIGN] Waldemar Świerzy (1931–2013) - Poland - 20th century - Poster Design for the Film “Death Like a Slice of Bread,” Watercolor on Cardboard (Martial Law, Movie Poster, Polish Movie Poster)

The artwork was created using paints on cardboard. The central part of the composition features an expressively rendered face of a man wearing a miner’s helmet, depicted in intense, deep shades of blue and purple. The figure has his mouth open and is screaming, which lends the work a strong sense of drama.
Visible on the surface are irregular red spots resembling drops of blood, contrasting with the cool color palette of the portrait. The background is kept in light tones, filled with red and black lettering containing the title and information about the film’s creators.
The entire piece is executed in Świerzy’s characteristic style—with a distinct, painterly texture and a synthetic, schematic approach to form. On the reverse, the dimensions of the original poster are written in red ink: 85 x 59

Paper, paint
Dimensions: 40 cm x 28 cm
Condition as shown in the photos
A work by Waldemar Świerzy, a grand master of the poster and co-founder of the Polish School of Posters. The design was created for Kazimierz Kutz’s film *Death Like a Slice of Bread*, which addresses the tragic events surrounding the suppression of the strike at the “Wujek” coal mine in 1981. The artist does not literally recreate historical scenes—instead, he constructs a powerful, symbolic image of suffering and resistance, using distortion, color contrast, and facial expressions.
Posters of this kind served not only an informational purpose but were also autonomous works of art, often collected and exhibited in galleries. This piece is part of the most significant trend in postwar commercial art in Poland, bearing witness to both the high artistic quality and the creators’ deep commitment to social and historical themes.
Waldemar Świerzy (1931–2013)—an outstanding Polish graphic artist, painter, and educator, recognized as one of the principal co-founders and most prominent representatives of the Polish poster school. He was born in Katowice and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under the guidance of, among others, distinguished professors associated with the postwar avant-garde.
As early as the 1950s, he was involved in designing film, theater, and music posters, creating hundreds of works that gained international recognition. His work was distinguished by a painterly approach to the poster—instead of purely graphic abstraction, he employed expressive splashes of color, painterly gestures, and highly individualized drawing. Jazz posters and portraits of musicians, characterized by a strong emotional charge, hold a special place in his body of work.
Świerzy was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he trained numerous generations of graphic artists. His works have won numerous awards at prestigious international poster biennials, including those in Warsaw, Brno, Lahti, and Mexico City. The artist’s works are held in the collections of major museums and private collections around the world.
Świerzy’s body of work represents a key link in the development of 20th-century European commercial graphic design, combining artistic merit with communicative function and elevating the poster to the status of an autonomous work of art.