Museum of Slavonia, Osijek, guest appearance in Zagreb City Museum
Exhibition concept: Marina Vinaj, MSc
Coordinator: Željka Kolveshi
Exhibition design: Mirta Kapetanović
Poster design: mit studio dizajn, Osijek
A poster as an interesting in visual-art terms and a thought-provoking combination on the augmented sheet of paper, publicly announced will make a passer-by stop to consider, delivering him a message, in the old days and now. Soon enough there comes the new message, more opulent, more substantial, it induces rage, causes embitterment, wins euphoria, gives rise to lesser or larger interest, curiosity and after some time it will be covered with new, fresher, better information. Still, no matter how ephemerally we experienced the poster, its cultural-historical value does not cease the day after the concert announcement or exhibition opening.
Assiduously gathered and stored in the museums and galleries, the poster collections witness particular life segments of certain environment more expressively, more intimately and more indirectly, therefore they are priceless in searching and painting of the past.
More than five thousand posters that have been gathered in the Museum of Slavonia have been witnessing the city life for hundred and fifty years. A history mosaic of Osijek would be incomplete without these paper witnesses, thus every one of them, no matter how fragile and year-burdened, has its place in the tale of the city history. They reflect theatrical events, movie programmes, political slogans and appeals, various products advertisements, inviting the people of Osijek to fairs.
The exhibition presents the selection of each unity, so that the posters have been grouped according to themes like theatre, movie, events, commerce and politics. This rough division has certainly neglected some themes that could have been selected, in particular those of concerts and exhibition openings. It was necessary to set the time limit, and therefore we have concluded the poster survey with post-war posters. A part of the more recent holdings is stored in the City library in Osijek that was founded in 1949.
The majority of the poster collection in the Museum of Slavonia in Osijek was purchased in 1929 and 1930, together with many publications of Osijek, from Oskar Friml Antunović, an inhabitant of Osijek, a notable bibliophile and collector. The assorted posters are significant documents of a definite era, its cultural-historical guideline; they communicate to the public even today in their aesthetically interesting and appealing manner.
We consider that every offered poster, together with its description, can tell its story and that story is as opulent as the history of Osijek.
Marina Vinaj, MSc
Pictures from the exhibition
photo Miljenko Gregl, ZCM
Exhibition catalogue
Vinaj, Marina. Poster to Poster : from the Holdings of Museum of Slavonia Osijek.
Osijek : Museum of Slavonia, 2008
