Post-Competition Exhibition of the Prof. Józef Mroszczak International Typography Triennial

This exhibition, translated and adapted from the museum’s Polish-language copy (the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre has no dedicated English version of this page), presents the award-winning entries of the Prof. Józef Mroszczak International Typography Triennial at the House of Words Gallery in Lublin.

Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre on the exhibition:

We mentioned this exhibition a year ago already. Typesetter Robert Sawa received the Grand Prix for his work: Typolub 2022, and the edition of “A Poem About the City of Lublin” 2024, prepared by: Alicja Magiera, Sylwia Woźniak, Robert Sawa was selected for the exhibition. Now the exhibition can be seen in person in Lublin at Dom Słów.

(Our translation - the museum publishes no separate English text for this exhibition.)

What to expect

The exhibition offers a wide cross-section of contemporary typography and typesetting art, from cover designs to experimental lettering compositions. The opening took place on 17 July 2026 at 5:00 PM at the House of Words Gallery; admission is free.

Tickets, opening hours and current information are available on the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre’s website .

This is a touring show. It arrived in Lublin from Nowy Targ, a town in the Podhale region of southern Poland, where it first opened in March 2025, and it is organised by the Mayor of Nowy Targ, the Municipal Culture Centre there and the town’s Museum of Printing. The competition’s first edition drew 200 typographers, designers and graphic artists from seventeen countries, from Poland and Germany to Japan, South Korea and Argentina. What travelled to the House of Words is the jury’s selection of the winning, commended and shortlisted work.

Entries were judged in three categories: letterpress printing and the artist’s book, typeface design, and the typographic poster. Four pieces worth slowing down for:

• “TypoLub” by Robert Sawa - the Grand Prix in the letterpress and artist’s book category. A poster hand-set from metal type, announcing the Lublin typography meetings of the same name.
• “Komeda Polish Jazz” by Wojciech Kołek - the Józef Mroszczak Prize in the typographic poster category.
• The “RL Limo” typeface by Radek Łukasiewicz - the special prize in the typeface category.
• “Poemat o mieście Lublinie” (“A Poem About the City of Lublin”) - the edition prepared by Alicja Magiera, Robert Sawa and Sylwia Woźniak for the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre, selected for the exhibition.

The show occupies a single gallery and is not large: 30 to 40 minutes is enough to see it properly. Since the Grand Prix went to a typesetter who works in this very building, pair it with the Chamber of Printing on the floor below, where the presses and cases of type that produce such work are still in use.

Context

The triennial is named after Józef Mroszczak (1910-1975), a graphic artist born in Nowy Targ and, alongside Henryk Tomaszewski and Tadeusz Trepkowski, one of the founders of the Polish Poster School - the movement that made Polish poster design internationally famous after the war. He designed some 170 posters, published Polnische Plakatkunst, a book promoting Polish poster art, in 1963, and became a full professor in 1956. He taught in Katowice, Warsaw, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Ulm, Vienna, Berlin, Parma, Linz, Cologne and Brussels.

The triennial itself is young: the first edition was judged in 2025. It is also deliberately narrow. The competition was aimed at art students and at young designers working primarily with printed letterforms, and the organisers were particularly after work made by traditional letterpress or combining it with contemporary digital typesetting. So it is a show about craft at least as much as about design.

The Lublin connection is not incidental. “Poemat o mieście Lublinie” is a work by Józef Czechowicz (1903-1939), the leading poet of interwar Lublin, and the 2024 typographic edition of it was produced at the Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre itself. The exhibition has come to the building where the Grand Prix winner works and where one of the selected pieces was made.

Tickets and time

Admission is free and needs no booking. The Centre states plainly that temporary exhibitions at the House of Words can be seen free of charge during opening hours. There is no separate ticket, no timed entry and no guest list - you simply walk in.

Be careful with the opening hours. The Centre’s own website gives them three different ways: the “Zwiedzanie” (visiting) page says the summer season runs June to September, Tuesday to Saturday 9:00-17:00; the site footer and contact details say Monday to Friday 9:00-17:00; the accessibility statement describes entries running Monday to Saturday. For the last two weeks of this run those versions cannot all be right. If you are travelling to Lublin for it, or planning a Saturday, call ahead on +48 81 534 52 33.

English on site: the Centre publishes no statement that this temporary exhibition is captioned in English, so assume the labels are Polish only and ask at the desk. Guided tours of the permanent exhibitions are available in English (45 PLN full, 35 PLN reduced, groups of up to ten), and the House of Words runs an English version of its website. Much of the work here is visual rather than textual, which softens the language barrier considerably.

The House of Words has two entrances - from ul. Żmigród 1 and from the courtyard at ul. Królewska 17. The building is only partly adapted for wheelchair users: the “Power of the Free Word” exhibition is reachable from the Królewska side, but the Chamber of Printing is down a flight of stairs.

How long to allow: 30 to 40 minutes for the exhibition alone, about an hour and a half if you add a guided tour of the permanent displays. Those are guided-only and ticketed: 30 PLN full and 20 PLN reduced in Polish, 45 PLN and 35 PLN in English. A combined pass covering four of the Centre’s sites, valid 30 days, costs 95 PLN full and 67 PLN reduced and is sold at the ticket desk at ul. Grodzka 21.

Who it is for: designers, printers, graphics students and anyone who enjoys looking at letterforms up close. Who will miss little: if you came for the story of Lublin or for something the children can do, go straight down to the Chamber of Printing - this is work to look at, not to handle.

Letterpress and bookbinding workshops run at the Chamber of Printing all year but have no fixed dates: they are arranged individually between 10:00 and 16:00 for groups of five to eight, from 30 PLN reduced and 40 PLN full for an hour and a half. Book on +48 81 534 52 33.

What the press says

No outlet has covered the Lublin leg of this exhibition. Searches across Polish regional and national media on 14 September 2026 turned up nothing. Its premiere in Nowy Targ was reported, however.

podhale24.pl (21.03.2025): the regional news site covered the prize-giving and the opening of the same post-competition exhibition at the Museum of Printing in Nowy Targ, citing the figure of 200 entrants from seventeen countries and describing the accompanying student work made to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Mroszczak’s death - podhale24.pl .

Announcing the first edition, the triennial’s curator Wiktoria Kowalczyk-Szlaga wrote that what pleased her most was the chance to show work “wykonane tradycyjną techniką druku wypukłego - typograficznego” (made by the traditional letterpress technique) - Museum of Printing, Nowy Targ .

Justifying the Grand Prix, jury member Professor Tomasz Bierkowski wrote that the author of “TypoLub” had built a contemporary visual language by combining traditional printing technique with typesetting material of extraordinarily varied size, kind and style - Museum of Printing, Nowy Targ .

See also

• House of Words - Chamber of Printing - the venue’s own profile: a working print shop and bindery operating here since 2008, with presses, type cases and paper-making.
• Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre - the institution that runs the House of Words, and home of the “Lublin. Memory of the Place” exhibition at the Grodzka Gate.
• “U with Two Dots” - the House of Words’ other temporary show, running in parallel and much longer, to 31 December 2026; one visit covers both.
• Józef Czechowicz Literary Museum - manuscripts and belongings of the poet who wrote “Poemat o mieście Lublinie”, the work whose typographic edition was selected for the triennial.

Museum profile: Brama Grodzka - Teatr NN Centre .