Cześć
⚡Neon nights in Warsaw
I love neon. I love how bright neon signs light up the urban environment, a beacon of modernity in a dark city. I like seeing words and symbols scattered throughout cities as things to notice and learn from.
What I didn’t really know about neon is how it can be. I learned this at the Neon Museum in Warsaw.
I wrote about the development of neon lights and advertising for Europeana several years ago. Most neon advertising is effectively capitalist, advertising goods and services. It developed in Western Europe and the USA in the early decades of the 1900s, after Frenchman Georges Claude demonstrated how to use the gas in glass tubing. One example is the Stomatol toothpaste advertising sign in Stockholm, which dates from 1909.
Stomatol sign, Stockholm, Olaf Meister, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
In Poland, and Warsaw in particular, neon came later - from the 1950s onwards.
After the devastation of World War II, Warsaw was rebuilt along Communist architectural principles. This meant identical, gigantic apartment blocks or boxy buildings with similar columns, turrets and other architectural features. So far, so monotonous.
In the cultural and political thaw that followed Stalin's death in 1953, the country’s leadership sought to portray Poland as a modern country, and neon provided the perfect way to do so. Inspired - but not influenced - by Western European cities, such as Paris and London, neon was adopted in Warsaw as a form of socialist advertising.
Berlin Warszawa, Neon Museum Warsaw
Neon sign from a ‘milk bar’, Neon Museum Warsaw
Thus, neon would not advertise capitalist companies and goods, but instead provide a public value. Signs reminded citizens of their duties, and signposted different locations and landmarks.
Neonisation was a form of propaganda. By the 1970s, top architects and designers were employed to design neon signs, adding colour and dynamism to cities across Poland.
Kino Helios sign, Neon Museum Warsaw
Sign from a shoe shop, Neon Museum Warsaw
To people living and growing up in Poland in the 1970s, many of these signs became iconic. However, post-1989, they began to be discarded as Polish society re-shaped. The Neon Museum started rescuing and restoring signs that were being thrown out. It includes signs from Warsaw and other Polish cities, as well as Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Finland and Hungary. It was a fascinating museum, and well worth a visit if you are travelling to Warsaw.
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Thank you for reading + until next time,
ace museums
Feature image: ‘Polish Neon’, Ilona Karwinska via Neon Museum Warsaw.