J.M. Brzeski

Polish visual artist, photographer, illustrator, graphic designer, art critic and journalist (17 February 1907, Warsaw — 1 October 1957, Kraków). Janusz Maria Brzeski (J.M. Brzeski) is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of avant-garde cinema in Poland, even though most of his films didn't survive. Brzeski worked extensively across other mediums and art disciplines, and besides Poland, he has lived in Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Janusz Maria Brzeski graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in Poznań in 1928; at school, he began creating early "expressionist" typographic works and graphics. Brzeski lived in Paris between 1929 and 1930, contracted by several design agencies and collaborating with Vu magazine. He also worked as a film set assistant for Paramount Productions. In 1930, J.M. Brzeski made the Seks photo collage series, one of the first cases of Sigmund Freud's parody. He also produced a collection of abstract "photograms," inspired by US early surrealist and dadaist Man Ray (1890—1976). Brzeski regularly collaborated with Kazimierz Podsadecki, and they organized the first Polish exhibition of modernist photography in Kraków in 1931. He founded the short-lived Polish Avant-Garde Film Studio (SPAF) in 1932, which lasted only two years, and directed two experimental films. Even though they've been lost, critics often cite them among the earliest Polish avant-garde experimental films, alongside Stefan Themerson's Europa, Europa (1931/32).