A Short Biography of David Hockney

Another watery piece featured in our March Masters show from the 1972 Olympics series is this one, by David Hockney. This work by the Englishman, Hockney, showcases his interest during this period in illustrations of human figures and water.

Original Poster by David Hockney Printed in 1972

1937-

David Hockney was born in Yorkshire, England.  As a teenager, he asked to attend art school where he studied traditional painting techniques.  He had a keen interest in photography, and was strongly influenced by American Abstract Impressionists.  In the 1960s, he made his first visit to the US, where he met Andy Warhol.  A few years later, he visited Los Angeles for the first time, and moved there soon after that.  Hockney loved images of water, and images of figures.  For this British boy, all that sunny LA had to offer became his subject matter.  For a time he used Polaroid images and acrylic paints to create his signature sun-drenched style.

Hockney’s pop art style and his obsession with the California lifestyle, so different than that of an Englishmen, characterize his design for the Munich Olympics.

A Short Biography of Josef Albers

As part of our March Masters show (opens this weekend March 17th, 2012), our posts will spotlight various artists of the 1972 Munich Olympics series with short introductions to their lives and work. The first artist we will discuss is Josef Albers, one of the founders of the Bauhaus School in Germany.

Original Josef Albers Olympics Poster Printed 1972

1888-1976

Josef Albers was one of the founders of the Bauhaus school (1919-1933) in Germany.  When the school was closed by the Nazis, he and his wife, painter Annie Albers emigrated to the US.  Albers explored the interaction of color with perception and was one of the first artists to investigate the psychological effects of color and space.

Over the course of his career, Albers taught at Harvard and Yale, painted, made prints, murals and wrote books of poetry as well as books on art.  He was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

His best known work is “Homage to Squares,” the style of which is represented in his painting created for the Munich Olympics.

Olympische Spiele Munchen “The Artistic Series”

Olympics Posters have been prized since the first International Olympics in 1896.

Original David Hockney Olympics Poster Printed 1972

Because the Olympics is such an important event and an event which is planned many years ahead of time, Olympics committees develop a concept, sometimes a logo or official image and mascot and then these things become part of the graphic identity of a particular Olympics. The posters are commissioned years in advance, and the artists chosen with care, often by contest.

It is a truism that artists produce better work when they are expressing themselves, then when they are trying to express the vision of their clients by commission.  (For more on this, see “Drive” by Daniel Patterson)*  This is apparent when viewing the famous “Artistic Series” of Olympic Posters from the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Original Josef Albers Olympics Poster Printed 1972

The 1960’s encouraged experiment, and so, for the first time, a group of artists was selected by the Olympics Committee to create osters and given free reign to create what they pleased.  Twenty-eight artists from Japan, Britain, Scotland, Germany, The US, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Poland,  France, Spain, and Italy designed these posters, and they were printed and sold through the Kennedy galleries of New York.

Some of the artists were already quite prominent when commissioned, such as Jacob Lawrence, Joseph Albers and David Hockney.  Others were lesser known, A few were rising stars such as Chilled, Hartung, Kokoshka. Regardless of the fame of the artist, these posters are a great graphic representation of the style of contemporary art of the time period.

Original Otmar Alt Olympics Poster Printed 1972

Many of our clients collect these posters, because they are beautiful, affordable, and they work well in groupings. In fact, they read like pop art when framed with chunky brushed aluminum frames or white frames.

Our blog, for the next few weeks, will feature some of these posters.  They fit very well with our March Exhibition “March Masters”  which open March 17th in our showroom in Berkeley.  This show features the poster art of fine artists.  You can view the entire Olympics series on our website in the sports section. Enjoy!

*Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead, 2011. Print.

Spring Skiing, a Cataloguing Project

Original poster for famous Swiss ski destination Davos, by Willy Trapp

My name is Karlie, and I am a fourth year student at UC Berkeley, studying History and Art History. I have been an intern at Vintage European Posters for almost a year, and I have loved the experience thus far.

Original ski poster by Ludwig Hohlwein

We recently had the opportunity of evaluating a collection of over 200 original ski posters for a client who has been collecting posters since childhood. Since we have almost finished the project, we wanted to share some of these great images with you.

Ski posters can be some of the rarest, and in some cases the most beautiful and intricately designed posters. The collection we worked with included landscapes, scenes of skiing and rolling ski slopes, and speed skaters racing against each other. It was a geographically diverse group of posters, with pieces from countries such as Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, Russia, and even Yugoslavia and the United States. There were examples of graphic design from every time period of the last century.

Cataloging this immense collection of ski posters was no easy task. There were

Original ski poster by Herbert Leupin

over 225 pieces, and each needed to be photographed, measured and then identified by the title, country of printing, printer, year of printing, and condition. Although some of the posters had the year apparent in the printer’s info or artists signature or contained the year in the title as part of a ski competition, finding the correct time period was a challenge.

We had to research the individual posters in our poster catalogues and the ski poster books that we had, and some had to be identified by the printing style. In different countries, offset printing was developed at different times, and thus through this detective work we could estimate the dates of each poster, whether the poster harkened from Germany, France, Russia, Switzerland, or Italy. Sometimes identifying the artist was challenging as well, since sometimes a scrawled signature or set of initials was all the information we had. However, we did uncover many famous artists such as Leupin,  Villemot, Willy Trapp, Ludwig Hohlwein, and Emil Cardinaux in the collection.

Original ski poster by Walter Herdeg

For further reading, consider the book: A Century of Swiss Winter Sports Posters by Jean-Charles Giroud (Geneva: Patrick Cramer Publisher, 2006)

San Francisco Flower and Garden Show

San Francisco Flower and Garden Show

The ‘Images de la Vie” (images of Life) Series   

The Images de la Vie series of posters were first created in 1945, just after the end of World War II.  These posters were designed to decorate French classrooms and to re-acculturate children who had missed out on much of typical French life because of the occupation and the war. There are over 100 posters in the series from 1945, all by illustrator the illustrator Poirie.

Many topics that are dear to me are addressed in the series such as cultivating a garden, foraging for mushrooms, caring for farm animals.  There are also posters which feature the butcher, the fish monger, charcuterie, and sports and stadiums, and eventually, in a later, unsigned series from 1950 and 1955 there are posters which feature industries such as coal mining, salt flats, shipping ports and airports.  There is even a poster from the fifties about shopping in department stores! Ooh la la, so French!

Enjoy these charming and naïve posters, and come and see our collection of original vintage posters from Europe and the United States at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show  March 21-25, 2012. Our collection is always available online at www.vepca.com and you can visit our showroom at 2201 Fourth Street in Berkeley by appointment.  Sign our mailing list to receive our blog, our newsletter and invites to pop up open weekends in the  Bay Area, the South Bay and Los Angeles.