Tuesday, January 29, 2013

You can't miss: Hans Sachs poster auction

Eye Magazine's blog did a fascinating post on Dr. Hansa Sachs, a German dentist who collected French and German posters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His collection includes posters from artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Alphonse Mucha, Théophile Steinlen, Pierre Bonnard, and Thomas Theodor Heine. Google any of these names and you will see some stunning art, perfect for design or typography inspiration. Toulouse-Lautrec's posters are particularly stunning, and as expected, he depicts his favorite subjects: dancers. And, yes, there are some for the Moulin Rouge.
File:Lautrec moulin rouge, la goulue (poster) 1891.jpg
(Photo found on wikimedia commons)

Sachs was a successful dentist, but his heart was in poster-collecting, and he truly had an eye for it. The Eye's blog post said Sachs' collection reached 18,000 by the 1930s. After narrowly escaping Nazi Germany and fleeing to the U.S., Sachs' collection was lost forever, or so he thought. Nazis had confiscated the posters, and just last year, 3,000 were returned to Sachs' son. The beautiful posters are now going to be sold at an auction in New York. Here is another Eye Magazine post on Sachs.

While many of Sachs' posters were lost, I still think it's heartening that 3,000 were found. Sachs was truly a man devoted to art and design.
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1 comment:

  1. Will GuldinFebruary 3, 2013 at 6:51 PM

    Some very cool posters. The story is fascinating, too. I love how he collected the every day stuff of German design. He's right, I think. That sort of everyday stuff says more about a culture than a single masterpiece.

    That said, these posters are pretty interesting too. Such different use of type and illustration. It's something you just don't see much anymore in graphic design. I wonder if these works were appreciated when they were first done, or if this kind of design was simply the norm for the time.

    — Will

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