The
most famous poster artist of the Art Déco, Adolphe Mouron
Cassandre, is the star of a pretty retrospective to the National
Library of France, Richelieu site. Designer completely
representative of its time, Cassandre became the Master of the graphic
illustration following a contest of posters organized by the Michelin
tires. Influenced by the Bauhaus and the cubism, it works out a
new figurative style, fluid, structured, symbolized, while keeping an
essential realism to preserve the advertisement. Two famous
posters such as North Express train and Etoile du Nord, show perfectly
this industrial stylization as well as the impression of speed and
power of the railroads. One finds there the metal cylinders of
Fernand Leger and the futuristic, depicting the impression speed.
Beyond the prestigious prow of the Normandy steamer, one of the
illustrations most present in the French collective memory remains
nevertheless the poster created for the Dubonnet aperitif which lived
inside the Parisian subway for a long time. The power of this poster is
related to the typography invented by Cassandre, which is integrated
perfectly in the graphic construction industry. Here the true
talent of the painter resides, to have known to create original
alphabets then to skillfully combine them with the aesthetic
environment. Cassandre will create the well known logo YSL of
Yves-Saint-Laurent as well as the character most representative of the
modernism Art Déco, Bifur.
