IMPACT: The Art of the Poster

The Summer exhibition at A FINE THING: Edward T. Pollack Fine Arts will feature 19th and 20th Century posters from the gallery’s collection. The poster, which began as a graphic means of conveying information developed over time into an art form with its own aesthetic parameters. The show will feature a few “broadsides” announcing theatrical performances which are lettering only, without any illustration, where the impact comes from the size and placement of type only, and will move through the development by Jules Cheret of the art poster in France in the 1870s and 1880s, the realization in the 1890s that posters could be collected, a craze inspired by the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Alfons Mucha, and the spread of the collecting mania to England and America, where work by Will Bradley and Edward Penfield was avidly sought after. The Secession in Austria, led by Klimt and Schiele, and the two World Wars, and the Art Deco movement in Europe and America between the wars produced exciting designs by many artists. Poster art of the latter half of the twentieth century was also vigorous, continuing the tradition of art in the service of products, entertainment and propaganda.