L´ESPRIT FRANCAIS. FRENCH INTER-WAR ADVERTISING POSTER

curator: Lucie Vlckova
architectural design: Adam Hochmuth
graphic design: Vladimir Vimr

The French poster is a unique phenomenon that has fundamentally influenced the visual culture of modern society. In the interwar period, it continued its golden era, which catapulted it into the center of attention of artists, critics and collectors at the end of the 19th century and became a visual medium with its own visual language. Although in the 1920s the repertoire of advertising tools was expanded by technical media such as photography and film and light, kinetic and large-format advertising penetrated the public space, the poster remained the most widely used promotional tool. The strong tradition of the French poster, based on the high illustrative skills of advertising professionals and the top craftsmanship of lithographers and reproduction graphic artists of large printers, influenced the form of advertising posters of the interwar era. Their characteristic feature is the charm, refinement, effective painting, narrative, exaggeration and wit, which made Leonetto Cappiello, Jean d'Ylen, Dransy, Paul Colin and others famous. A unique concept of the modernist approach was represented by Cassandre, who combined an emphasis on simplification of illustration and the purposefulness of visual communication with a novel sense of style and composition. The works of French poster artists were relatively well known in Czechoslovakia at the time, especially thanks to numerous contacts and exhibitions, and were received there with great acclaim, highlighting the qualities known as esprit and charm. The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague already acquired a unique set of large-format prints from the Parisian printing house Vercasson for its collections, which were presented in Prague in 1923 and later a number of partial acquisitions, thanks to which this very attractive stage of poster creation is representatively represented in its collections. The exhibition will present the most valuable works, especially large-format prints by Jean d'Ylen, which have never been exhibited in Bohemia since the 1920s - that is, an entire century.

The exhibition was under the patronage of the Ambassador of France to the Czech Republic, HE Stephane Crouzat.