Artist Poster Paul Peter Piech William Blake

Advertising Poster - William Blake Quote Poster - "To see a world in a grain of sand…". Paul Peter Piech (1920 - 1996) was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA, the son of Ukrainian parents. He studied at the Cooper Union College of Art in New York. On graduating he obtained work at the Dorlands Advertising Agency in New York where Herbert Bayer was the art director. He came to Britain as a serviceman during the Second World War and was stationed in Cardiff where he met his future wife, Irene Tompkins. They married in 1947 and had one daughter. After the War Piech stayed in Britain and studied at Chelsea School of Art, London funded by a GI grant. He then worked in the advertising industry from 1945 - 1968, becoming art director of the London agency, Crawfords. In 1959, while working at Crawfords, he set up the private press Taurus Press of Willow Dene, based at his home at 2 Willow Dene, Bushey, Hertfordshire. The first publication produced by the Press was War and misery, a portfolio of Piech's woodcut images. In 1968 Piech set up as a freelance graphic artist, accepting commissions and part-time teaching in order to devote more time to the private press. Piech designed poem posters and printed books and illustrations which expressed his concern with freedom of conscience, ideological and social issues and racial equality. His commissions included work for Amnesty International and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Cutting graphics and illustrations in lino or wood, he often illustrated quotations from poets, politicians and philosophers such as William Blake and Martin Luther King. The Press produced 70 publications and Piech's work was shown in numerous exhibitions and appeared in international publications. In the 1980s he moved the Press to Limetree Way, Porthcawl, Mid-Glamorgan. Piech was a Fellow of the Society of Typographical Designers and a founder member of the London Chapel of Private Press Printers. Country: UK. Year: 1970s. Artist: Unknown. Size (cm): 45.5x64.5. Fair condition, brown marks and staining, minor creases in margins.