Secession XIV, Beethoven was created in 1902 as a poster for the 14th Vienna Secession Exhibition. The poster was made to promote the exhibition but also to honor Ludwig van Beethoven, as that was one of the main factors of that year’s exhibition. The promotion seemed to work because almost sixty-thousand people showed up to…
Katie Butler: Before he burgeoned into the advertisement titan in adulthood, Jules Cheret lived off of commissions from local theaters and other organizations. By the time he was eighteen, however, he received the opportunity to work with perfume engineer Eugene Rimmel to design advertisements and business cards. This was massive for Cheret, who would eventually…
Katie Butler: By the middle of the nineteenth century, Jules Cheret was a household name thanks to his distinct take on lithographs. Before Cheret reformed the technique of posters being tediously copied with austere and dull colors, this artist reinvented the wheel by painting directly onto stone with vibrant colors. One of his poster commissions…
This poster was commissioned to advertise the Polish National Opera’s 1964 production of Alban Berg’s avant-garde opera Wozzeck in Warsaw. The opera is based off of the everyday life of soldiers and the townspeople of a rural German-speaking town. At first glance, because of the heavy use of the color red, the poster can be…