Stasys Eidrigevičius

So today I was looking at a couple of really cool sites about graphic design and illustration:

one that presents a history of graphic design
http://guity-novin.blogspot.ca/

and another that offers a haphazard but overall pretty awesome collection of posters and book illustrations
http://50watts.com/

I was interested in looking at Polish poster and book design, to try to find some inspiration that would deliver me from the super slick contemporary digital illustration and concept art vortex I seem to be sinking in and let me alight instead onto something a bit more gritty and substantial.

While perusing the many great images on offer, I was delighted to rediscover the art of Lithuanian/Polish illustrator Stasys Eidrigevičius. Although I didn't know his name at the time, I have been familiar with his wonderful posters featuring slightly disturbing and mysterious pastel "masks" representing the crumbling faces of sad clown-like figures since I was about twelves years old — when I had a bunch of them taped to my room's walls! While we were visiting my grandmother in still-communist Warsaw, my mom had taken me to this great "poster store" and let me pick a bunch of them to bring back to Montreal. (Thanks mom!)

I found one of the posters I actually had in my room. Here it is:

And here are some other ones:

Such great stuff!