Page 23 - Swann Galleries - Modernist Posters - Sale 2314 - May 13, 2013

DESIGNER UNKNOWN
17 ● M. Circa 1931.
371/2x24 3/4 inches, 95 1/4 x63 cm.
Condition B / B+: repaired tears at edges; overpainting along upper edge; creases and abrasions and restoration
in margins and image.
Fritz Lang’s first movie with sound starred Peter Lorre as a disturbed child murderer. It is considered
to be Lang’s best film. Lang, who had traditionally worked with the UFA (Universum Film AG),
worked with Nero Films to produce this movie due to political pressure involving the film’s subject
matter. This same, stark image of a hand, emblazoned with a red “M,” appeared on the original
German poster but did not have the repeating motif of the letter in the background. This linocut
poster is for the original release at the Moghrabi Theatre (built in 1930) in Tel Aviv.
[4,000/6,000]
JULIUS KLINGER (1876-1942)
18 ● WIPAG KLINGER. 1923.
361/4x48 1/2 inches, 92x123 1/4 cm.
Condition B+: restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; repaired tears and restoration at edges and
in image.
Klinger loved using animals in his posters, so much so that a good part of his work seems like a zoo;
ducks he held in special regard. Klinger used them, along with their eggs, as an allegory for poster
creation. They appear three times in his posters, each time representing an important poster publisher
or printer; in 1910 for Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Klinger’s publisher in Berlin; for Wolfsberg, the Swiss
poster printer in the 1920s; and finally, this image for WIPAG (Wiener Plakatierungs - und Anzeigen
Gesellschaft), a large poster billing company in Vienna. Denscher p. 156, Müller-Brockman p. 74.
[2,000/3,000]
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