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Zygmunt Januszewski in 2010
Zygmunt Januszewski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. Photograph: Peter Hirth/Camera Press
Zygmunt Januszewski at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 2010. Photograph: Peter Hirth/Camera Press

Zygmunt Januszewski obituary

This article is more than 10 years old
Polish artist and illustrator who worked for the Guardian and several other European newspapers

The Polish artist and illustrator Zygmunt Januszewski, who has died aged 57 after suffering from cancer, opened a window in the Guardian to an unfamiliar but enticing landscape. In 1991, as the result of partnership with several European newspapers, the Guardian began publishing their articles translated into English and found illustrators to complement the writing. Zygmunt's drawings held a great appeal from the time I first saw them in the smudgy pages of the Warsaw daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. I loved the quality of the drawing, the imagination and the insight that they gave into the soul of a formerly oppressed nation; Poland's transition to democracy had begun two years earlier.

The work that Zygmunt did for the Guardian, inhabited by fantastical characters portrayed with a witty and bizarre sense of humour, brought a quite different dimension to the pages. It illuminated articles on fascism by Umberto Eco, or the politically convoluted career of the Austrian writer Peter Handke, or the difficulties facing central Europe, swinging between east and west. But I had the sense that his strange men brandishing flags, or his ramshackle machines built of words, were engaged in a struggle with separation, isolation, self-definition or alienation.

Zygmunt Januszewski's award-winning illustration for the Guardian Review
Zygmunt Januszewski's 2003 award-winning illustration for the Guardian Review

Zygmunt was born and educated in Warsaw. He studied in the graphics faculty of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (1976-1981), where his diploma work was a set of illustrations for Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. In 2002 he returned to the academy, now as a teacher of illustration.

A flourishing career was marked by international success – the many publications to carry his illustrations included Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Le Monde and the Viennese paper Der Standard. From 1982 onwards, his work appeared in more than 100 exhibitions in Poland and across Europe, and his work is held in permanent collections not only in Poland and German-speaking Europe, but also in Finland, France and Japan.

Two Guardian Review covers brought Zygmunt particular recognition. In 2003 he won second prize in the Victoria and Albert Museum illustration awards for Witness, heralding an article by Timothy Garton Ash on the border between fact and fiction. The following year he received an award by the Society of Publication Designers, New York, for Cruel Harvest, introducing a critique by Jonathan Raban of the failure of imagination evident in the invasion of Iraq.

That cover pointed to the emptiness of the western triumph with a missile and its blown-apart master, sharing between them the colours of the stars and stripes. In a 1999 interview, Zygmunt put his liking for starting from reality down to sensing that he had no direct influence on it: "My drawings are for me the only reality I can shape and change. The other thing is the fact that I am not in the place I want to be. I start drawing and then I feel I am in my element. I catapult myself into my self-created world hoping that the reality I have created is strong enough to survive in."

Posters for theatre and opera productions provided another natural outlet for his striking images. He also produced cartoons and prints, created installations and wrote poetry.

A couple of times Zygmunt came to Britain and I had the pleasure of showing him something of the Sussex countryside near my home. At Berwick church he particularly admired the murals by the Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant, and Vanessa and Quentin Bell.

Zygmunt liked to emphasise the idea of the British as islanders, separate and cussed. He would send messages referring to "you on the island" or to events on "the island". It grew into an ideal metaphor for the relationship between us and the cultures of mainland Europe. Artists such as Zygmunt wave their flags and catch our eye, compelling readers everywhere to recognise universal concerns.

He is survived by his wife, Dorota, and son, Maciek.

Zygmunt Januszewski, artist, born 17 February 1956; died 12 September 2013

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