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PIERRE FIX-MASSEAU (1905-1994)
80
●
ETAT / LE RÉSEAU DE LA MER. 1935.
39
1
/
2
x24
3
/
4
inches, 100
1
/
4
x63 cm. Edita, Paris.
Condition A-: minor restoration and creases in image; pin holes in corners and margins. Framed.
Pierre Fix-Masseau was the son of French sculptor Pierre Félix Masseau. As a young man in the late
1920s, he worked as an assistant in Cassandre’s studio. He was greatly influenced by Cassandre’s style and
technique which is evident in much of his work. He continued working through the 1980s, when he
designed a series of posters for the Venice-Simplon Orient Express. Here, he employs photomontage
combined with colorful graphics and dynamic typography to promote the Chemins de fer de L’Etat and
the routes to the beaches of France. Much in the way Fix-Masseau used graphic shorthand to depict the
clouds in the sky, so does he use a typographic shorthand in referring to the railroad simply as “Etat.”
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