Holiday Stars: Posters to Celebrate the Season

December 6th, 2019 - January 6th, 2020

'Tis the season for our 26th Annual Holiday Poster Show! Great posters never go out of fashion, and our latest exhibition features some superb new acquisitions as well as other favorites to celebrate the season - travel, food & drink, fashion, film, rock 'n roll and winter sport. The exhibition will be held from December 6th to January 6th at our gallery at 460C Harrison Avenue in SoWa, Boston’s art and design district.

Artist Unknown, England - Pan Am & Northwest Orient, circa 1967

In the mid-1960’s, nothing was more fashionable than London’s Carnaby Street, where the worlds of fashion and Rock n’ Roll came together to create the Swingin’ Sixties. Supermodels Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton could be seen alongside the Who, the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix and Britain's biggest rock stars socializing or shopping at its mod and hippy boutiques, or at rock concerts around the corner at the storied Marquee Club.

This attention-grabbing poster captures the era perfectly -- a fashionable mod “it-girl” casually observes the viewer through Union Jack eyes. Cleverly, the dimple below her mouth incorporates the Pan Am logo. The crash of colors and patterns in the lettering is equally indicative of the time, where psychedelic colors and distortions meld with Olde English typographic flourishes.

Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Madame Butterfly (french text), 1904

Surely one of the most famous and moving of all Italian posters, this is Metlicovitz's masterpiece for his good friend Giacomo Puccini's opera, which opened at La Scala in February, 1904.

Metlicovitz chose the poignant opening of the second act, where Butterfly watches a nesting robin in the garden. Her lover Pinkerton had promised three years earlier to return "when the robins nest," yet he is nowhere in sight.

Butterfly's anxiety is palpable in this scene, even with her back turned to the viewer. The contrast between the lush garden and the empty space occupied by Butterfly speaks volumes, and her hand on the railing makes her appear a prisoner who must wait as life passes her by. It is a poster tour de force. This is the extremely rare French text variant.

Artist Unknown, Battleship Potemkin 1905 - Uran Theater, Moscow, 1925

This is a remarkable poster for Sergei Eisenstein's Avant-Garde silent movie of the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, which sparked the first Russian Revolution in 1905. The film, which quickly became one of the most celebrated of all time, was created to mark the 20th anniversary of the mutiny by mistreated sailors, which the Bolsheviks viewed as the key antecedent of the 1917 Revolution.

The film made its grand premier in Moscow on January 18th, 1926 at the 1st Goskinoteatre (now called the Khudozhestvenny). This anonymous poster advertises the showing at the Uran Theater in the capital one day later. Only 1000 of the poster were printed; this is a remarkably small print run hence the poster's rarity. It is possible the design was used only for the Moscow first run and that the additional posters by Lavinsky and others were produced later as the film made its way around the country.

Herbert Leupin, Noblesse - Un Grand Vermouth, 1958

A turn-of-the-century top hat and a small glass of vermouth – all bathed in a rich, deep fuchsia, and all that is needed to convey a message of luxurious warmth and welcome. Paul Colin recognized the genius of his pupil in his poster class in the late 1930s in Paris: “Leupin, remember that name.”

Noblesse reveals a remarkable economy, a finesse, a sensuous beauty that delighted Leupin's clients and the public alike. Indeed, Leupin won more than 80 Swiss Poster of the Year awards over a 30 year career – an unparallelled record.

Leupin stands beside his predecessor Leonetto Cappiello and Jules Cheret and Raymond Savignac as the greatest and most prolific product poster artists of all time.

Walter Herdeg, St.Moritz (six skiers), circa 1930

By 1900, St. Moritz had become one of the exclusive mountain resorts that would fuel Switzerland's renown as the "Playground of Europe." Because it is blessed with 300 days of sunshine, St. Moritz became especially popular with British aristocrats who wished to escape rainy England for a winter in the sunny Swiss Alps.

In 1930, the resort capitalized on this by creating a smiling sun logo which appeared in many of its posters and promotional materials. This anonymous classic, one of the earliest uses of photomontage in travel posters, is thought to be created by famous designer Walter Herdeg. This is the rare and spectacular large 35 x 50 inch format.