Jan Bajtlik: rethinking poster art through heritage and experimentation

Jan Bajtlik is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work spans drawing, painting, illustration,  as well as a wide range of mediums and canvases, garnering international recognition and acclaim. He has received silver and bronze medals at the International Poster Triennial in Toyama, special mentions at the Bologna Ragazzi Award, as well as a special award from the Polish Ministry of Culture, among other distinctions. Bajtlik has also participated in over fifteen solo and group exhibitions, including Paris Design Week and the Cité Internationale des Arts.

Since 2016, Bajtlik has maintained an ongoing collaboration with Hermès, designing silk scarves and fashion accessories, as well as projects for Hermès Home, including the realization of window installations for the brand’s first Warsaw location and reopening of Dubai boutique. His drawings and illustrations have appeared in print publications such as Vogue Poland, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, in addition to authoring his own books and publications. Though deeply inspired by heritage, culture, and tradition, Bajtlik’s work maintains a sense of untethered transcendence, with designs that feel both referential and futuristic — seemingly immune to the passing of time and the confines we assign to it.

hube: Your influences span thousands of years and multiple visual languages—from cave markings to calligraphy to street art. What is it that holds these worlds together for you? 

Jan Bajtlik: It’s all about something really basic—something really vernacular, deep inside of our instincts—something which pushes us to create things. Calligraphy or historic drawings or street art operate as graffiti, ‘off scene’, something less official. They operate with very simple forms, and they gather enormous expression. Of course, we see these factors in other centuries and nowadays in contemporary art, but they gather some essence, and there is an amazing force behind this. It is always inspiring to me how we combine this practice of ‘less is more’ in different forms—black and white painting or drawing, something in between calligraphy and image itself. Something which I could also refer to later between design and art. Pure art.