Vintage Posters | Ali Baba & The Forty Thieves | Mucha Ihnatowicz

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is a folk tale in Arabic added to the One Thousand and One Nights in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard it from Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. As one of the most popular Arabian Nights tales, it has been widely retold and performed in many media across the world. This poster is for the 1980 film adaptation “Adventures of Ali-Baba and the Forty Thieves”, a 1980 Indian-Soviet action adventure film by Latif Faiziyev and Umesh Mehra. The poster artist Maria (Mucha) Ihnatowicz was born in 1937 and studied under the master of the Polish School of Posters Professor Henryk Tomaszewski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, graduating in 1963. She was a key member of the Polish School of Posters during the 1960s and 1970s. She produced dozens of posters over the next two decades and several book covers as well. She was responsible for the visual side of the Interesting Book Club series from the mid-1960s to the 1990s. Her works are characterized by a spare and concise form, and they are often colored with ironic tones as well as innovative, hand-made lettering. Her covers of literary works successfully reflected the character and tone of the text. While saving means of expression, her art is characterized by intense suggestiveness, the use of flat spots, and strong color dissonances. She is 87 years old as of 2024.