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- Artists
- Sawka, Jan
 - Bands
- Dylan, Bob
- Edition Details
| Year: | 1975 | | Class: | Poster | | Status: | Fan Art | | Technique: | Offset Lithograph |
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(from Jan Sawka facebook page:)
Jan Sawka would have been delighted to learn today’s news of Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize. This art poster, which Jan Sawka created as an homage to Bob Dylan in 1975, has a fascinating back-story which reveals a lot about the politics of art and culture of the Cold War. Sawka made this poster shortly before his exile to the West by the totalitarian communist system. This poster was commissioned by the communist government’s publication agency WAG (Wydawnictwa Artystyczno-Graficznego), but it was never sold or made available to the Polish public. It was made only for export and sold to the West, where Polish posters were enjoying a boom in popularity.
Such posters were made not only for income purposes (with artists seeing no royalties ever), but likely to elevate the image of the Warsaw Pact governments as tolerant of counter-culture. This was a propaganda tactic used across the arts by the communist system. The recordings of Bob Dylan were also unavailable to the Polish public. Jan Sawka had heard his music thanks to officially banned radio stations to which Poles would nevertheless gain access – Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Radio Luxemburg. Illegally smuggled records would also make the rounds through the circles of the young Polish intelligentsia. Bob Dylan’s music and persona were an inspiration to the intelligentsia of Poland, who would eventually be key in launching the movement that would end communism for millions of people.
Within the portrait of Bob Dylan, Sawka created a landscape on his shirt, with an iconic road that surely is a reference to “Highway 61.†On Dylan’s pocket flap is a dedication – “For Bob.â€
Bob Dylan, 1975, Offset.
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