GRAPHIC DETAIL

BARBARA BARANOWSKA

WITH ITS COPULATING TENTACLED monster resembling a Medusa-like mane, the French poster for Andrzej Zulawski’s (1981) is one of the all-time great horror illustrations. It was also designer Barbara Baranowska’s movie poster swan song, although she is still alive (for which she designed the poster) and declined an offer from Roman Polanski to star in his debut feature, . Her Polish posters varied between charming illustration and stark photo collage, but her best work was still ahead of her. In the late ’60s she married Zulawski—then working as an assistant to Andrzej Wajda—and in 1968 they moved to Paris. The marriage lasted only a few years, and Basia, as she was known to friends, stayed in France when he returned to Poland. Over the next decade she produced a series of indelibly striking posters, mostly for the French releases of American productions, including films by Milos Forman, Alan J. Pakula, Steven Spielberg, and Billy Wilder. Some of her French posters—which were signed “Bacha” and later “Basha” in an attempt to explain the pronunciation of her nickname—mix black-and-white photographs with illustration in the style of her earlier Polish work, but for the most part they are wholly drawn. Her 1971 painting for is a candy-colored beauty, much in the style of her children’s book illustrations, and in one of her favorites of her own posters—for the little-known (1972)—two children stand facing each other in a snowfall of swastikas. In the late ’70s, Baranowska and her husband, producer Christian Ferry, lived in New York and the Dominican Republic and mingled with Hollywood royalty (she painted portraits of Alfred Hitchcock and Barry Diller). She returned to poster-making just once more, creating her masterpiece for her ex-husband’s best-known film.