Although new technology has drastically changed the ways of modern communication, poster art still belongs to the most visually attractive media. Its appearance in the second half of the 19th century was conditioned not only by improvement of lithographic printing techniques, but also by the need for modern advertising in public space. The beginnings of poster art in Croatia are marked by a boom of culture production, and reminiscences of art nouveau stylization and effective linear compositions are evident. Among authors of distinctive individual expressions when it comes to the medium of posters from the beginning of the 20th century, Radovan Tommaseo (Split, 1895 - Split, 1924) stands out. After studying at the Craft School in Vienna, Tommaseo dedicated himself to interdisciplinary work upon his return to Split and was equally successful as a set designer, costume designer, associate of the Ethnographic Museum and lecturer at the Craft School. His works are a kind of trademark of Split’s visual culture in the early 1920s, from painting and graphics, caricatures, book and magazine equipment to applied art and posters. Tommaseo’s posters include the poster for Emanuel Vidović’s exhibition at the Art Pavilion in Zagreb (1921), which embodies elements of art nouveau and art deco. By skillfully superposing an image, i.e. motif of the Port of Split, its mirror reflection on the surface of the sea and the text, a visually powerful symbolic interpretation of the image and text was achieved.
The graphic design of Mihajlo Arsovski (Skopje, 1937 - Zagreb, 2020) is also oriented towards an expanded field of visual culture in which boundaries of certain genres, art and popular culture are annulled. From the design of the youth press, posters for the Student Center Gallery, the student theatre festival, the Gallery of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, to the visual identity of the Theatre &TD and a number of other anthological achievements, Arsovski has achieved one of the most important authorial oeuvres in the history of design in Croatia. Most of his posters were made by screen printing, which thanks to pop art became a ubiquitous element of intermediality in visual culture in the 1960s and 1970s. The equipment for Tekamagazine (1974-1976) stands out, for which Arsovski, in addition to a series of publications, devised the entire visual identity and posters that announced it. In the design for Teka magazine, in addition to dominant combination of printing red and black, the constant is represented by a role of typography that dominates in equipment of books and magazines, while the series of posters is based on typographical signs and illustrations taken from old engravings that are used in the postmodern manner of quotation, creating images that offer layered meanings in addition to visual attractiveness.
Jasna Galjer, PhD, Full Professor
Department of History of Art
at the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences, University of Zagreb
