Demons and devils have served commercial artists for well over a century, appearing in theatre bills, magic show posters, pulp imagery, and holiday illustration alike. The figure of the devil was especially useful: menacing enough to stop the eye, theatrical enough to sell almost anything. Polish theatre designers of the postwar decades returned to the archetype with particular intensity, treating it as a vehicle for allegory as much as spectacle. The period originals shown here span that full range.
