Graphic master A.M. Cassandre and a rare Barcelona poster
It is always interesting to find something special about Barcelona. Below is the exceptionally rare Spanish version of the poster A.M. Cassandre created (probably in 1926) for the Sools hat company. There are only 3 copies known of this poster.
Graphic Master A.M. Cassandre, pseudonym for Adolphe Jean Édouard-Marie Mouron.
At the time A.M. Cassandre, a pseudonym, for his real name was Adolphe Jean Édouard-Marie Mouron, was at the forefront of modern poster design with a strong emphasis on typography. While living in Paris A.M. Cassandre developed a love for Art Deco and typography, which he translated into his poster designs. He was very clear on the difference between creating art and posters, “which are unlike paintings and are not meant to be. A poster is a mass-produced object existing in thousands of copies like a fountain pen or automobile. Like them, it is designed to answer certain strictly material needs. It must have a commercial function.”
Sools Hat Company Barcelona.
The Ernest poster designed for the Sools Hat Company is what one would call a perfect example of a commercial function. It is product with a most indelible image. The artist has designed a three-headed figure wearing a top-hat, a derby and a fedora silhouetted in black-and-white on three masks which gaze out on the world with frigid urbanity (in one mask the eye is reduced to a monocle’s perfect circle)”, his son Henri Mouron wrote about his father’s Barcelona poster. Actually A.M. Cassandre designed not one, but three posters for the Sools hat company between 1926 and 1929 (the eye with the green hat is part of the 1929 one). The commercial aim of these posters was to promote Ernest and Stetson hats in foreign markets. If you ever find an original consider yourself lucky, there are very rare and valuable!
