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see also:
Alphonse Mucha
"Master of Art Nouveau" |
THE ART NOUVEAU POSTER
Typical features of Art Nouveau style, such as the flatness of the
colours, the lively chromatic contrasts, and the flora-fauna motifs,
proved to be well suited to the new lithographic techniques. The
poster enjoyed great success as a principal product of Art Nouveau
style: by the turn of the century, there were specialist poster
galleries and a host of collectors. In central European countries,
the Secession groups produced a number of dedicated artists in the
field of graphic design: Sattler was responsible for the beautiful
poster for Pan, Heine designed the cover for the magazine
Simplicissimus, and Zumbusch created the cover for Jugend. Also
successful were E.P. Glass, F. Heubner, C. Moss,
E. Praetorius, M. Schwarzer, and W. Zietara in Germany, and, in Brussels, van Rysselberghe, with his famous poster for the group of artists from
the Libre Esthetique movement. In addition to art exhibitions, the
worlds of entertainment and product advertising benefited from the
rise of the poster. Among the leading Art Nouveau graphic artists
was the Frenchman Jules Cheret, whose pioneering adoption of a
single central image became a model for other poster designers,
including Eugene Grasset (1845-1917) and
Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939).
Mucha, best-known for his designs for the actress Sarah Bernhardt.
reduced the poster form to a distinctive slender strip. Dominated by
full-length images of dreamy women with long, flowing hair and
sweeping skirts, his style of imagery was widely emulated. Very
different, but equally successful, was the approach chosen by
Henri
van de Velde for his advertisement for Tropon, a tinned food
product. He made no allowances for the commercial requirements of
illustration, but caught the viewer's attention with a striking
design in which the brand name was placed in the middle of a
completely abstract composition. The art of advertising poster
design also underwent interesting developments in Italy. The first
exhibition of art for publicity was held in Milan in 1906, paying
tribute to the contribution artistic advertising could make to the
aesthetic value of the citv environment.
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Jules Cheret
(b Paris, 31 May 1836; d Nice,
23 Sept 1932). French lithographer, poster designer
and painter. Chéret’s formal training in art was
limited to a course at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin,
Paris, as a pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran.
More important for his future as a poster artist
were his apprenticeships with lithographers from the
age of 13. He created his first poster, Orpheus
in the Underworld, for the composer Jacques
Offenbach in 1858; this, however, did not lead to
further commissions, and he went to London where he
designed book covers for the publishing firm of
Cramer as well as several posters for the circus,
theatre and music halls. These efforts led him to
work for the perfume manufacturer Eugène Rimmel, who
in 1866 supported Chéret’s establishment of a
commercial colour lithographic shop in Paris. First
working in one or two colours, in 1869 Chéret
introduced a new system of printing from three
stones: one black, one red and the third a ‘fond
gradué’ (graduated background, achieved by printing
two colours from one stone, with cool colours at the
top and warm colours at the bottom). This process
was the basis of his colour lithographic posters
throughout the 1870s and early 1880s; later, when
the format of posters had grown to life-size, his
colour schemes became much more elaborate and
varied. By 1881 his work had become so popular, and
he had become so financially successful, that he was
able to transfer the responsibility of his shop to
Chaix & Company while maintaining artistic control.
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_______________________
________________
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 A Musician |
Eugene Grasset
(b Lausanne, 25 May 1841; d Paris, 23 Oct
1917).
French illustrator, decorative artist and printmaker of
Swiss birth. Before arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1871,
Grasset had been apprenticed to an architect, attended the
Polytechnic in Zurich and travelled to Egypt. In Paris he
found employment as a fabric designer and graphic
ornamentalist, which culminated in his first important
project, the illustrations for Histoire des quatre fils
Aymon (1883). Grasset worked in collaboration with
Charles Gillot, the inventor of photo-relief printing and an
influential collector of Oriental and decorative arts, in
the production of this major work of Art Nouveau book design
and of colour photomechanical illustration. Grasset used a
combination of medieval and Near Eastern decorative motifs
to frame and embellish his illustrations, but most
importantly he integrated text and imagery in an innovative
manner which has had a lasting influence on book
illustration.
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Comb with an Assyrian, Comb with a Naiad, Jewel (broche) |
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Y he aqui un ciervo blanco |
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Clamores repentinos |
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A correr
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see also:
Cards and Posters
(G. Barbier,
Rie Cramer,
J. Harbour,
R. Kirchner,
Carl Zander,
d'Erte)
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