Poster, Vautier César,

1937

Adolphe Mouron Cassandre realized that an essential law of the poster medium is the need to catch the viewer’s eye from a distance. He broke with the enthusiasm for narrative of his predecessors and focused on a single main motif. But monumentality not only dominates his famous posters of ships’ bows and railways, which pay homage to the contemporary faith in technology. In this small-format poster from 1937, a hand is blown up in size. It is not the pleasurable aspect of smoking that is presented but rather the advertised product itself. The monumental effect is enhanced even further by making the hand appear as if cut from stone and placed on a pedestal. Its sculptural solidity stands out from the gentle color gradient in the background. Cassandre repeated this motif in other posters for the tobacco industry, with variations in the hand’s posture. The integration of the lettering into the composition, which is typical for Cassandre, can also be found in another hand poster from 1931. (Bettina Richter)