Prague Quadrennial - International Competition of Theatre design and Architecture

Polish poster for the international competition of theatre design that was held in Prague. The poster was created by a Polish poster artist, Jiří Rathouský, in 1967. That was the year when the event was held for the first time and ever since that time it has been organized once in every four years. It is the biggest event in the world about scenography.

Important artists who marked the history of the theater and the scenography participated and exposed at the Prague Quadrennial, such as Salvador Dalí, Josef Svoboda, Oscar Niemayer, Tadeusz Kantor, Guy-Claude François and Ralph Koltai, as well as figures of the contemporary theater, such as Robert Wilson, Heiner Goebbels and Renzo Piano.

The poster's style that was both popular in Poland and Hungary in the 1960s. At the bottom part, where the title of the event is displayed, the letter ‘Q’ of quadrennial has the same design as the image above it, thus creating a harmony between the text and the visual section. The image that occupies the greater part of the composition is very simple, yet expressive. It gives the feeling of perspective as the squares get smaller like a spiral. It looks as if we are looking at the stage from the back row of the auditorium. The black part refers to the darkness of the hall. Then it turns into pink that resembles the red curtain separating the mysterious world of the stage from the audience, and finally the farthest blue part is the stage.