The collection, we have chosen for the current Best of Terry Posters exhibition, emphasizes these kinds of posters.
Czechoslovak theater posters have been successful companions of film posters already since the 1960s. They are very rare and difficult to obtain, because the number of their prints was much smaller than that of film ones (they were printed by thousands, while theatrical only at about two hundred to three hundred pieces). The two groups also differed in format. While film ones were printed in A1 format, theatrical ones were mostly in B1 format. This larger size contributes to their distinctiveness. Also, a different kind of group of graphic artists was devoted to theater posters, other than the one that worked for the Central Film Rental, and thanks to that, the expressive spectrum and richness of Czechoslovak cultural poster were greatly enriched.
In the selection Best of Terry Posters, theater posters are mainly represented by three leading artists: Zdeněk Seydl, Jaroslav Sůra and Josef Flejšar.
Zdeněk Seydl (1916 – 1978) was a painter, graphic artist, set designer and versatile artist (one of the legendary book graphic artists – more than a thousand realized book designs) designed posters mainly for the National Theater. You can be enchanted by his unmistakable style in his eight exhibited designs.
Jaroslav Sůra (1929 – 2011) belongs to the most prolific authors in the field of poster art. During his life, he created approximately six hundred posters, be it for film, theater or music.
His poster for the performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. at the State Theater in Brno in 1964 is one of the most cited in professional publications. Even in his case, it is an unmistakable style characterized by distinctive, hand-drawn typography.
Josef Flejšar (1922 – 2010) focused on applied graphics (posters, book graphics, coordinated visual style, exhibitions and monumental creation (designs of tapestries and decorative panels, sgraffito painting and drawing), and he was one of our most important poster designers, as well. He designed more than five hundred of them and the TP collection has the honor of managing part of his estate. The exhibition includes eight of his posters – theatrical (Cosi Fan Tutte, Dalibor), advertising (for Pragoexport) and folklore for the Strážnice festival. Exceptional work was a collection of posters he had done for the Franz Kafka exhibition from 1994.

Foreign posters from the TP collection are represented in this selection by the German artist Hans Hillmann (1925-2014). In the former West Germany (BRD), author and artistic posters were not widely designed as mostly commercial advertising realized by graphic studios prevailed there, as in other Western countries. However, between 1950 and 1970, Hans Hillmann designed one hundred and thirty posters for the German distribution company Atlas Film and the Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner, which distributed artistically valuable films. With these posters, Hillmann earned his place in the history of artistic poster art and some of his works already do belong to iconic films (such as Battleship Potemkin or Seven Samurai).
Four Polish film posters (from Wojciech Zamecznik, Roman Cieslewicz and Wiktor Górka) complement the spectrum of foreign posters in the TP collection – as well as a sample of four tourist posters from the 1930s.