Cassandre
Who
Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, born on 24 January 1901 in Kharkov to a French family, studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Academie Julian and signed his posters Cassandre. He designed posters from the early 1920s to the late 1930s, typefaces for the Deberny & Peignot foundry, magazine covers, stage sets and, late on, the Yves Saint Laurent monogram. He died by suicide in Paris on 17 June 1968.
Why they matter
He turned the interwar poster into bold geometry, with trains, liners and lettering drawn as one design and the product magnified until it filled the sheet. His Au Bucheron poster for a cabinetmaker took a first prize at the 1925 Paris decorative-arts exhibition, and in 1936 he became the first graphic artist given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. He drew the typefaces Bifur (1929), Acier and Peignot (1937), and his 1932 Dubonnet triptych introduced the serial poster.
What to buy
Originals: Cassandre's posters are colour lithographs printed in large runs under his control between 1923 and 1948, by Hachard & Cie, L. Danel and his own Alliance Graphique, Draeger Freres, and Nijgh & Van Ditmar in Rotterdam, and a period impression of any state is an original. The big railway and liner posters are serious auction pieces; Swann and the poster dealers on 1stDibs are where to look and compare. The trap is the authorised reproductions: from 1980 his son Henri Mouron licensed editions such as a Nord Express (1980), a Pathe (1981) and an LMS Best Way (1985). They carry their publication dates and editorial marks, which is the first thing to read on any sheet offered as an original, and under a loupe a modern offset print shows a regular dot screen. The estate authenticates against Sylvia Colle-Lorant's 1982 catalogue raisonne. Prints: Cassandre is in copyright, so an honest cheap reproduction is one licensed by the estate; a dated estate reprint is the best wall poster short of an original. Books: A.M. Cassandre by Henri Mouron (Rizzoli, 1985), written by his son, 315 pages with 398 illustrations, the first monograph and still the standard one; it is out of print, so buy it second-hand.
Notes
MoMA holds the Normandie and Dubonnet posters and gave him his 1936 exhibition. From 1936 he drew nearly all of Harper's Bazaar's covers until 1940. He moved into stage design from 1934, for Louis Jouvet, Serge Lifar and the Comedie-Francaise, and went back to painting. In copyright until 2039, so there are no free image archives for him.
Story
Dubonnet was a quinine aperitif, invented by the chemist Joseph Dubonnet, and its name already carried a pun: "Dubon, Dubonnet" - du bon, something good. In 1932 Cassandre added a beat in front. His triptych reads DUBO, DUBON, DUBONNET - du beau, du bon, Dubonnet: something beautiful, something good, the brand. In the first panel a small geometric man in a boater raises his glass, drawn in outline and only partly coloured. In the second he drinks and the colour spreads through his chest and arm. In the third he is solid red and pouring himself another. The logical fourth panel Cassandre left out, for the viewer to finish.
It was one of the first posters designed to be seen from moving vehicles, a sequence meant to be read in rapid succession rather than one image to stop in front of. Dubonnet pasted it on hoardings and gable walls across France and put the little man on ashtrays, blotters, calendars, fans and maps; one painted gable wall survived into the early 1980s. Parisians remembered it from the Metro, where the slogan ran along the tunnel walls, read beat by beat from a moving train. The aperitif later lost its market, but its slogan stayed famous even among people who never tasted it.
Key works
- Au Bucheron (poster, first prize at the 1925 Paris exhibition)
- Etoile du Nord (poster) (1927)
- Nord Express (poster) (1927)
- Dubo Dubon Dubonnet (poster triptych) (1932) - MoMA
- Normandie (poster) (1935) - MoMA
- Peignot (typeface) (1937) - Deberny & Peignot
In museum collections
- First In Research, from the Early Series (1937)
Smithsonian American Art Museum ↗ - First in Development, from the Early Series (1937)
Smithsonian American Art Museum ↗ - Reclamation, from the Early Series (1937)
Smithsonian American Art Museum ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
Originals
See also
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