art deco poster
 Joseph Binder |
Art Deco Poster - HistoryArt Deco replaced Art Nouveau as the major international decorative style after World War I and continued until World War II. Art Deco represented a machine age aesthetic, replacing flowing, floral motifs with streamlined, geometric designs that expressed the speed, power and scale of modern technology. Design influences were many, from the modern art movements of Cubism, Futurism and Constructivism to ancient geometric design elements from the exotic cultures of Egypt, Assyria and Persia. In poster art, precursors of this style were the German Plakatstil, the Viennese Secession, the Deutscher Werkbund, and the Parisian fashion design revolution which commenced in 1908. The style received its name from the Decorative Arts Exposition of Paris in 1925.This exposition marked the mature phase of Art Deco design, a style that by that point had become very popular and widely recognized. Simplification and abstraction were always hallmarks of this style, although the soft elegance and exoticism of its early days yielded to a more muscular and forceful style in the '30s. It was often called the "Cassandre Style" after its most famous artist, who enjoyed a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Cassandre's sleek designs of towering ships and speeding trains are still considered to be the quintessential Art Deco images. art deco posters - new international decorative movementThis scientific language of design was popularized in a new international decorative movement called Art Deco. In this machine age style, power and speed became the primary themes. Shapes were simplified and streamlined, and curved letterforms were replaced by sleek, angular ones. Art Deco showed a wide variety of graphic influences, from the modern art movements of Cubism, Futurism and Dada; to the design advances of the Vienna Secession, Plakatstil, and the Russian Constructivists; to the exotic art of Persia, Egypt, and Africa. Art Deco poster, like Art Nouveau before it, spread quickly throughout Europe. Artists of note included Federico Seneca and Giuseppe Riccobaldi in Italy, Ludwig Hohlwein in Germany, Pieter Hofman in Holland, Otto Morach and Herbert Matter in Switzerland, E. McKnight Kauffer in England, and Francisco Gali in Spain. |