The Faculty of Graphics is the largest faculty of the Academy with a wide range of programs in the field of artistic and design graphics. It is located on the main campus at 5 Krakowskie Przedmieście Street.
About the Faculty
The Faculty of Graphics is the largest faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Over 400 people study here! Studies at this faculty are universal and characterized by a broad programme scope – they combine the identity and continuity of educational traditions with modernity and the challenges of the contemporary art world. The Faculty offers long – cycle (five – year) master’s studies, part – time first – and second – cycle studies, part – time second – cycle studies and postgraduate studies.
Studies at the Faculty of Graphics are characterized by an individual approach of each young artist developing creative sensitivity. In the teaching process, special attention is paid to developing students’ creative and workshop capabilities, dialogue and discussion, as well as openness, innovation and interdisciplinarity. The faculty’s wide program offering in the field of artistic and design graphics enables an individual development path for every creative person, even the most demanding one. Classes at the Faculty of Graphics are conducted by high-ranking specialists in their fields – leading, recognizable, and successful designers and artists in Poland and abroad.
Operating freely in the modern job market
Studies at the Faculty of Graphics are aimed at creative people who want to work as freelancers, graphic designers and see their future in leading design studios, advertising agencies, publishing houses, and cultural institutions. A graduate of the Faculty of Graphics is a creative artist, an independent graphic designer who uses all the tools that allow him to function freely in the modern labour market – in companies, advertising agencies and studios, design studios, printing companies and publishing houses, as well as in the broadly understood creative industry, based on contemporary graphic imaging technologies and multimedia.
Traditions of artistic and design graphics
The Faculty of Graphics within the structure of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw began to function in the second half of the last century, but the traditions of artistic and design graphics at the Academy date back to the beginning of the 20th century. Graphics has a very rich and deeply rooted tradition in European art and culture. This is a field with the broadest creative and technical possibilities. It integrates fine arts – traditional graphic techniques, drawing, and painting – and design arts in the field of broadly understood graphic design with the support of modern media and technologies. For this reason, studies at the Faculty of Graphics are versatile, providing in – depth and comprehensive knowledge, going beyond the framework of narrow specializations and enabling comprehensive education of artists and designers.
„First of all, we offer an individual approach to each student, respecting their life and creative comportments. Everyone has a chance to create a personality and become a creative individual, but we also need to find a place where we will have a chance to start shaping this attitude. I am sure that the Faculty of Graphics of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw is just the right place” – prof. Jacek Staszewski, Dean of the Faculty of Graphics
History
Established at the beginning of the 20th century, the School of Fine Arts was nationalised in 1922. Ten years later it was renamed the Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1934 it received full academic rights. From the beginning, the school’s programme strongly emphasised the role of applied art. The equal treatment of 'pure’ and 'applied’ art was a distinctive feature of the Warsaw academy from the outset, especially in comparison with the more traditional Krakow academy. The academy remained single-faculty, which strengthened the role of the authorial studios. One specialisation that a student could choose after completing a common first year was graphic design. At the end of 1922, the position of Professor of Graphic Arts was taken over by Władysław Skoczylas, who ran one of the leading studios at the university until 1934. In 1926, the Applied Graphics Department was established, headed by Edmund Bartłomiejczyk.
After the Second World War, it was the graphic designers who rebuilt the tradition and material existence of the college. Stanisław Ostoja-Chrostowski became the first rector. One of his most important collaborators was Edmund Bartłomiejczyk. The death of both professors shook this process of restoring graphics to its position in the structure of the academy. The merger of the Academy with the former Municipal School of Decorative Arts and Painting, which took place in 1950, strengthened the direction of graphic design. In 1951, the Book and Illustration Studio was taken over by Jan Marcin Szancer, and 1952 saw the opening of two poster studios led by Henryk Tomaszewski and Józef Mroszczak, educators associated with the Polish poster school. In 1957-58, the Academy underwent a reform, as a result of which it became a university with four faculties: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Graphic Arts, except that studies at the Graphic Arts Faculty began after a 2-year general study affiliated to the Painting Faculty. The Faculty of Graphic Arts gained full autonomy in 1968.
An important initiative of the Faculty of Graphic Arts was the initiation of the awarding of honorary doctorates by the Academy. The first recipient was Yusaku Kamekura; subsequent laureates on the initiative of the Faculty of Graphic Arts were Umberto Eco, Andrzej Wajda and Ryszard Horovitz. In addition, the Faculty is the organiser of the International Poster Biennale in Warsaw – an event of worldwide standing – and the Tadeusz Kulisiewicz International Triennial of Graphic Arts.
