Upcoming Highlights: Vintage Posters

At Auction August 7

Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, *Bogotá 1938 / IV Centenario / Juegos Deportivos Bolivarianos,* 1938. $2,000 to $3,000.

Complete Catalogue

For over 15 years our summer Vintage Posters auction has brought wonderful examples of beach and summer resort posters to market. The tradition continues with images for well-known and historic resorts in France, the United Kingdom, the Americas and beyond. In addition, our most extensive selection of vintage automobile posters to date will include images from the 1890s through the 1990s, advertisements for brands such as Peugeot, Clément, Mercedes, Daimler and Porsche, and various international races, including the Grand Prix.

A section of Sports posters is crowned by four extraordinary images by Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, which celebrate the first Bolivarian Games in 1938, held as part of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Bogota, Colombia. These images, of a tennis player, a javelin thrower, a Discus hurler (shown above) and polo players, seldom come to market and are both graphically and typographically unexpected examples of Art Deco design. A robust section of Art Nouveau features works by luminaries Jules Chéret, Alfred Choubrac, Jules-Alexandre Grün, Alphonse Mucha, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Francisco Tamagno.

Among the rare and unusual examples from the war propaganda section is Graham Simmons’ The Army Isn’t All Work, 1919, showing soldiers in their leisure time playing cricket and football, alongside several British images from World War I. A rare 1918 poster by Alfred Leete, who was the artist behind the iconic Lord Kitchener poster that inspired James Montgomery Flagg‘s I Want You!, encourages young British men to See the World And Get Paid for Doing It. Other rarities include Flagg’s Travel? Adventure? Join the Marines, circa 1918, featuring a marine riding a leopard backwards and Howard Chandler Christy’s Aviation, Fly with the US Marines, 1920, featuring an airman astride a soaring eagle.

Exhibition Open August 1 – 6

The exhibition is free to attend and open to the public. We welcome special and educational groups with advance notice–send an inquiry to rsvp@swanngalleries.com.