Turin International Exhibition Poster

Original Metlicovitz for the Turin Fair, printed in Italy in 1911

In the 19^th Century Worlds Fairs and International Expositions were much anticipated glorious and elaborate  events hosted by wealthy and prominent cities.

These fairs featured pavilions from many countries, which were constructed over a period of one year, by prominent architects and designers representing their countries.  Participants strived to feature modern innovations in technology, commerce and the arts and spared no expense in the construction and display of their goods and technologies.

The Turin Exposition of 1911 was a proud moment in Italian history, held just 50 years after the reunification of Italy It served as a proud spotlight on Turin as a modern city.  The fair opened on April 29^th and lasted for 6 months .  It was held in the Parco del Valentino.  The Exposition’s focus was on Industry and Labor, to distinguish itself from another Exposition held in Rome the same year with a focus on the arts.

The artist chosen to create the impressive poster for the event was Leopoldo Metlicovitz, (1868-1944) an Italian of Serbian descent, born in Trieste.  Metlicovitz was not formally trained as an artist but exhibited a rare talent in capturing light and shadow, and he rose to prominence quickly after his arrival in Milan during the pinnacle of Belle Epoque poster design.  He joined the foremost printing house Ricordi, where he studied with Italian poster designer Adolph Hohenstein.  After Hohenstein’s departure, Metlicovitz was named Ricordi’s artistic director. He went on to create famous posters for the prominent department store Mele  among others.

The poster Metlicoviz created for the Turin Fair captures the very best of classical realism.  The figures are proud, perfect in form, and the flag they display represents unified  Italy with the great city of Torino  rich in commerce, industry, architecture spread out behind them.

A Short Biography of Marc Chagall

Original Exhibition Poster "Hommage a Fernand Mourlot" by Jirlow, printed by Atelier Mourlot, Paris in 1990

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Marc Chagall lived a life that spanned the 20^th century.  He was born in Vitebsk, a  Russian Jewish ‘Shtetl” or village in 1887,  and his young life was made up of family, village, and farm.  His desire to become an artist brought him first to St. Petersburg in 1907and then to Paris where the arts were flourishing. in 1910.  To earn money, he worked as a servant and a sign painter.  Chagall’s paintings were first exhibited in Paris in 1912 when the artist was only 25 years old. His early paintings are rich with imagery from his childhood, chickens, goats, church windows, and throughout his career he revisits the warm and pastoral village that shaped him in a style referred to as naïve realism.

Original Exhibition Poster by Marc Chagall "Menton" printed in Paris by Fernand Mourlot in 1968

Chagall spent WWI back in his native Russia, where he married Bella in 1915. After the war, the two of them spent time in Berlin and settled in Paris where they spent the 1920s enjoying the life of a successful artist in the ‘city of light’.

Chagall was friends with the influential editor and dealer Ambroise Vollard who commissioned him to create book illustrations in the 1920s, and encouraged Chagall to explore the themes of the circus and the bible in his paintings. In 1931, Vollard commissioned Chagall to create 100 etchings depicting the bible, and so The artists and his wife visited Syria and Palestine for inspiration.

"Vitraux Pour Jerusalem" by Marc Chagall Original Exhibition Poster printed in Paris in 1961 printer Fernand Mourlot

Chagall spent time in the South of France, moving to Gordes in Provence in 1940.  He loved the light, the flowers and the landscapes of the South of France, and these inform his work from this period and going forward. For a second time, the war interrupted his path, and Chagall, Bella and their daughter Ida avoided the occupation by emigrating to the United States at the invitation of the NY Museum of Modern Art. Tragically, Bella died of pneumonia in the states in 1944.

After the war, Chagall settled again in South of France, this time in Vence, Nice where he revisited the themes of the bible, the circus, his childhood, Judaism in his work.  In 1950, at the age of 63, he began to work with the esteemed printer Mourlot in Paris, there he with studied with master lithographer Charles Sorlier. and explored color lithography. “Chagall wrote in 1960, “When I held a lithographic stone or a copperplate in my hand I thought I was touching a talisman. It seemed to me that I could put all my joys and sorrows in it..Everything that touched my life through the years, births, deaths, weddings, flowers, animals, birds, the poor workers, my parents, lovers in the night, the biblical prophets, on the street, at home, in the temple and in heaven. And as I grew older, the tragedy of life within us and around us.”*

"Offrande a Tour Eiffel" by Marc Chagall

Chagall’s embrace of the medium of color lithography is apparent in his work. When working in this medium, artists traditionally begin with a black outline and then produce subsequent color plates.  Chagall built layer upon layer with pure color and the resulting lithographs are so dense that they resemble paintings, with color so lush, it looks as if you could scrape it off the page.

In 1952 Chagall was commissioned to illustrate the pastoral romance of Daphnis and Chloe. That year, he married for a second time to Vava, On their honeymoon, they explored Greece where they fell in love with the ancient story of Daphnis and Chloe. Chagall returned home to Nice and began to work on the series.  In 1958, he was commissioned by the Paris Opera House to create sets and costumes for the ballet of Daphnis and Chloe.  The artist worked closely with the director and the dancers, and his paintings were informed by this. It is interesting to note that the first poster designer, Jules Cheret, studied the dancer Loie Fuller and brought her graceful visage to posters in 1891.  Alphonse Mucha designed stage sets, costumes and jewelry, and Eugene Grasset created wallpaper and volumes of botanical illustration.

"Le Lecon de Philetas" Original Chagall Exhibition Poster printed in Paris by Atelier Mourlot in 1987

For the remainder of his career, Chagall continued to create beautiful and rich paintings and lithographs filled with mysticism, folklore, romance, the bible, the circus, landscapes , musicians, Russian Judaism.  He was an unparalleled colorist, and was admired for his skill as a painter and a print maker.  He courageously embraced new techniques throughout career and was rewarded with many opportunities and honors.

Chagall was considered to be the ‘last survivor of the first generation of American Modernists’.  Born in 1877, Chagall lived through two wars, made his home in 5 countries and witnessed the impressionists, the fauvists, the symbolists, the surrealists, and the birth of modern art. In 1973, When Chagall was 86 years old, The Musee de Chagall opened in Nice.  Five years later in 1977, The Louvre, which rarely exhibited the work of a living artist , featured  62 his works.

Picasso said “When Matisse dies Chagall will be the only painter alive who understands what color really is.” With the death of Chagall in 1985, the world lost it’s finest colorist. *

*Marc Chagall Printmaker” by James Healy, 2002 from the Weinstein Gallery

Visit our website and click on view the collection select ‘art exhibitions’  to see our new acquisitions.  All of these posters are original art exhibition posters, printed by the esteemed printer Fernand Mourlot.  All are linen backed archivally and can be shipped worldwide.

A Short Biography of Rene Gruau

Among poster artists, only a few have had a career as long and prolific as Rene Gruau’s. From the beginning of his career in the 1920′s to the year of his death in 2004, Gruau never ceased to draw and work, leaving an oeuvre of “chic” posters encompassing the best of the old world’s fashion style.

Gruau was born in Italy in 1909 , with an Italian father and a French mother. His father was an aristocrat, withgreat expectations for his young son: he wanted him to be a diplomat and resented his son’s passion for drawing. But Gruau followed his elegant mother – his first model — a jetsetter, traveler and fashionista, throughout Italy and then to Paris. Of his mother the artist said “My mother was mad about travel, so I began to wander all over the world before I learned to walk” and “I feel I owe my calling as a draftsman to my mother.” She introduced him to painters and fashion magazine editors who encouraged him to pursue his craft. At 15, thanks to his mother, her friends and his own talent, Rene Gruau already had a promising career as a fashion illustrator awaiting him.

During the post-war period, he reached the summit of his career as he worked with the most brilliant fashion designers such as Dior, Givenchy and Lanvin, and high class music-halls such as the Moulin Rouge and the Lido — clients whom he continued to work with later on.

Gruau was a man of the world and of many skills: an illustrator and a poster artist, he also sold paintings, designed costumes and stage sets, and even created his own collection of clothing in 1948-49. In Gruau’s many and varied works, one thing always shone through: his style — a notion he strongly defended at a time when the use of photography in advertising threatened poster artists.

Original "Dior (man with towel)" Poster by Rene Gruau, c.1978

Original "Dior (couple)" poster by Rene Gruau, 1979

One of the main characteristics of Gruau’s style is the importance he puts on what he calls “la ligne” (the line) — as the line that forms his star-topped signature — a concept reminiscent of Cappiello, whom Gruau greatly admired, and his “arabesque.” La ligne is this one brush stroke that defines an image, gives it its movement, its structure, its style. In Rouge Baiser for example, it’s the delicate profile of the woman: one single line encapsulating all the feminity and refinment of a red lipstick.

Original "Rouge Baiser (beret)" poster by Rene Gruau, c.1949

For Gruau, a line also often implies a movement. Therefore, throughout his long career, Gruau always made a point of working with models, refusing to create pure paper beings. The artist based a lot of his creations on his models’ movements, attitudes, expressions. Because for Gruau a poster should have ‘a strong personality’ and because, to him, drawing was so much about style, he chose his models very carefully. Some of the most elegant ladies of the time, such as Nitzah Bricard, Dior’s muse, or the model Bettina Graziani, posed for him.

Original "Moulin Rouge Frisson" Poster by Rene Gruau, 1965

Another noticeable quality of Gruau’s work is his clever and varied use of perspective and composition. Using high angles, low angles and negative space, he creates images that naturally attract the eye. For Ortalion stockings, he draws a beautiful woman, looking down at the viewer from almost outside of the poster, playfully daring him to look up her dress and attracting his attention to her long legs, wrapped in bright red stockings. The diagonal created by the model’s legs directs the eye both to the product and its name.

Original "Ortalion" poster by Rene Gruau, 1967

For the Dior campaign, Gruau creates a frame in the poster itself and encloses the Dior man between two dark panels, reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints. By doing so and throwing light over the naked character, Gruau playfully invites the viewer to intrude upon the model’s intimacy, and gives him the delightful thrill of being a voyeur — and getting a peek at the product.

Original "Dior (man in doorway)" poster by Rene Gruau, 1978

Most importantly perhaps, what defines Gruau’s style is his use of colors, generally three: black, white and a third — red. This sacrosant trio’s symbolic is obviously highly charged, but Gruau’s reason for choosing those colors might have to be sought somewhere else… Before becoming a poster artist, Gruau was an illustrator : he made his debut drawing for newspapers and magazines, which often meant drawing in black — and using the white of the paper as a color — sometimes adding one color. Red is the color our eye perceives the most rapidly, an undeniable advantage for advertisement. Gruau himself personally liked red but also insisted on the fact that it is a color that always reproduces well, even on ordinary paper.

Original "La Cigarette" Poster by Rene Gruau, 1983

There lies Gruau’s talent as a poster artist: Gruau always worked with, and not against, the technicalities of his trade. Even his simple lines and broad brush strokes were not only a mark of his style, but also designed to be reproduced easily and in a great number. Working and sketching endlessly, Gruau thus strove to make his designs as simple as possible, to only keep the essential, the quintessential idea, that was to finally come like a sneeze (“un éternuement,” in Gruau’s own words). Sometimes that idea was an elegant line, sometimes it was a smart design, as in the Bemberg fabric’s campaign, with bikers to advertise the fabric’s strength and an acrobat to advertise its flexibility.

Original "Bemberg La Fodera Che Va Forte" Poster by Rene Gruau, 1973

Original "Bemberg" Poster by Rene Gruau, c.1980

If you want to get a better idea of Gruau’s brilliant career, come to our showroom in Berkeley or to one of our upcoming shows. You can also visit our website to see our extensive collection of fashion and cosmetics posters, and compare Gruau’s style to his contemporaries, Villemot and Savignac.

Sources:

“L’Art de la Plublicité — The Art of Advertising: Rene Gruau,” by Réjane Bargiel and Sylvie Nissen. Published by Le Cherche Midi Editeur in 1999.

 

This blog post authored by VEP Intern

Candie Sanderson

Student at La Sorbonne Nouvelle

Edited by Itinerant Poster Collector and VEP Owner Elizabeth Norris

A Short Biography of Guy Georget

Today we feature the posters of another great poster artist: Guy Georget, and one who deserves more attention from connoisseurs of the travel and product posters.

We have combed our shop  library of poster books and found no biography of Guy Georget. Google yields nothing, and even our French Auction sites are mum about the man who created some of our favorite posters, beyond his birth and death dates (1911-1992). Another proof of the fact that poster artists were most often considered mere “ad men” and not true artists. Since an “imaginary life of Guy Georget” hasn’t come out yet, let’s focus on what we do know – his work!

Original "Spain (arch)" poster by Guy Georget, c,1948

Georget’s first commercial posters appear in the late 1940s. Hired by the tourist boards, the artist produced posters tempting people to visit Spain in which you see the influence of Picasso and Georges Braque.

Original "Spain (orange and peppers)" poster by Guy Georget, c.1950

Looking at the artist’ work s from this period, one is struck by his sense of composition and perspective, and his rather classical choice of subjects. His “España” from c.1950 poster looks a lot like a still life, with rather emblematic objects of that specific genre – fruits, amphora. However, after a closer look, some signs of his later style can be found in the geometric design of the fan, the yellow of the lemon.

Original "Espana (guitar)" Poster by Guy Georget, c.1950

In 1960, Georget was awarded a plum which would please any graphic artist –  he was selected to design the logo of France’s venerable Postal Service  “La Poste”

The famous logo of La Poste, created by Guy Georget in 1960 (photo courtesy of google)

During this period, he also worked for Air France, another prestigious post for graphic artists of the time.

Original "Air France -- French Riviera" Poster by Guy Georget, c.1965

We have sold Georget’s work spanning a 3 decades the 1940s, the 1950s and the 1960s.   During those years, his style evolved from traditional to fun and light hearted. If you look at his work chronologically, you will see how his style became more graphic, his lines bolder, his colors brighter. His “Mexico” poster for Air France from 1963 flirts with cubism. The white outline around the character and the palm leaf makes it appear almost as a collage. The result is a bright, attractive image, evoking Mexico’s sunny weather, folklore and exoticism.

Original "Air France Mexique" Poster by Guy Georget, 1963

A talented graphic artist to must be  “au courant” — on the cutting edge of new trends, of the evolution of art and perception: by adapting his style to his time, Georget managed to keep his clients’ image modern and attractive, and proved his talent as a poster artist.

Speaking of “au courant,” look at how Georget reflects the best of the post-war style in his poster for philips, where lightbulbs go on strike.

Original "Philips (strike)" poster by Guy Georget, c.1950

If you want to see more Guy  Georget posters, come to our showroom in Berkeley or to one of our upcoming shows. You can also visit our website to see our extensive collection of original travel posters from 1880 to 1970.

Sources:

“Air France Posters: Making the World Dream” by Calvet and Thibault. Publisher: Le Cherche Midi. 2006.

 

This blog post co-authored by VEP Intern

Candie Sanderson

Student at La Sorbonne Nouvelle

And Vintage European Posters’ Owner Elizabeth Norris

Short Biography of David Klein

We are excited to have new Klein posters for our show next week.  As we were talking about Klein and  the tradition of travel posters after WWII, we decided to share some of what we learned.  Klein was born in El Paso, Texas in 1918, and moved to California to attend the Art Center School — later renamed the Art Center College of Design — in Los Angeles.

Like many other poster artists, David Klein started his career as a painter and illustrator. In the 1930′s, he was part of the California Watercolor Society, a group of artists who got noticed for their original use of paper and color and their focus on everyday life in California. Their style was characterized by rich colors and free, broad brushstrokes directly applied onto the paper without any preliminary drawings. There, undoubtedly, Klein learned some of the techniques he later used as a poster artist: quick brushstrokes on large format, bold colors and designs.

Original "TWA Egypt" Poster by David Klein, c. 1965

During World War II, Klein contributed to the war effort and made use of his talent to illustrate army manuals. After the war, he moved to New York and settled in Brooklyn Heights. There, he started making window cards and posters for many major Broadway shows such as The Music Man and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Klein’s major breakthrough as a poster artist happened when he started working for Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines (TWA) Klein was asked to develop an advertising campaign for different travel destinations and came up with a clever blend of emblematic landmarks, images drawn from American collective consciousness, bright colors and abstract, modern designs. He captured and defined the atmosphere of places as diverse as New York, San Francisco, Switzerland, Ireland, Paris or Egypt. His posters came to represent the glow of post-war air travel, the Jet Set style so representative of that era. Klein’s work at TWA won many Awards for Excellence from the Society of Illustrators.

A sneak peak at one of our new acquisitions: Original "Las Vegas -- Fly TWA" Poster by David Klein, c. 1965

Klein then worked with many other companies, including the First National City Bank of New York (later Citibank) for whom he designed a campaign that was so original and became so popular that the bank decided to produce ready-to-frame sets of prints and sell them. There too, Klein won many awards.

A commercial artist, Klein however came back to watercolors at the end of his life — some of them are now displayed in museums.

Although Klein died in 2005, his images continue to influence the poster world. In 2006, the online travel agency Orbitz displayed a campaign Klein designed for them in 2000, and very reminiscent of his TWA years — a sign of today’s nostalgia for the post-war air travel era? Entertainment Weekly recently featured his work in an article depicting the universe of the ABC series Mad Men. One can easily imagine Klein, in his white shirt and black tie, presenting his cutting edge New York poster and its graphic depiction of Times Square to Don Draper, who would then nod and declare “Yes, that is what we want people to feel”

Another sneak peak at one of our new acquisitions: Original "Florida -- Fly TWA" Poster by David Klein, c.1965

Come to one of Vintage European Posters upcoming shows in Berkeley, Healdsburg, Burlingame or Santa Monica and see our dynamic collection of Original vintage posters advertising TWA from the post war period.

You can also see more David Klein posters on our website, along with many other original travel posters from 1880 to 1970.

Sources:

http://www.davidkleinart.com/Biography.html

http://illostribute.com/2011/04/david-klein/

 

If you want to read further, we rec0mmend “The Art of the Airways” by Geza Szurovy. Published by Zenith Press in 2002.

 

This blog post authored by VEP Intern

Candie Sanderson

Student at La Sorbonne Nouvelle

Edited by Itinerant Poster Collector and VEP Owner Elizabeth Norris