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| Publish In: The Switzerland Advisor, Chicago 1994.
| Classic Swiss Poster Art for sale at "Galerie un deux trois" in Geneva Advertising posters have been a quintessentially Swiss medium since they were first produced to lure tourists to the mountain resorts in the 1890's. Some of the posters created by graphic designers like Emile Cardinaux, Walter Herdeg, or Otto Baumberger are recognized today as classics, and their distinctive styles are occasionally still copied, in the recent "retro-look" ad campaign for Swatch, which mimicked Herbert matter's wintersport montages of 70 years earlier. We have discovered a gallery in Geneva which is the only one in Switzerland specializing in poster art. The Galerie un deux trois at 4 Rue des Eaux-Vives, 1207 Geneva, has over 10'000 posters in stock, about half Swiss, the rest mainly French and Italian. They range from the classical tourism and transportation posters to advertising for sporting events, exhibitions, cultural events, social and political themes, and consumer products. Prices start at Sfr 100 and go up to Sfr 4000, certain rarities go for even more. (to put this in perspective, a 1921 poster by Cardinaux for the Palace Hotel in St-Moritz was sold by Christie's at auction for $ 16'000.). The Gallery's owner, Mr. Jean Daniel Clerc, speaks english well and is very knowledgeable in the individual artists as well as the history of the medium itself. He's been collecting posters since 1977 and founded the gallery in 1983. He also exhibits at vintage posters fairs throughout the USA. Mr. Clerc is accustomed to dealing with American clients, so you have no need to worry about the complexities of shipping your purchases home. Credit cards are welcome, as are checks drawn on US banks. A thumbnail sketch of the development of Swiss poster art begins with the burgeoning railroads at the end of the last century. They were the clients for the first advertising posters in Switzerland, which typically illustrated an Alpine idyll in a soft romantic style. They sometimes depicted the new cogwheel railways that were making such landscapes accessible to city folk, and often included maps and timetables. After 1900, a more prominent central design took over, based on a better understanding of how advertising really worked. The turning point for the art form was reached in 1908 with Cardinaux's famous poster for Zermatt, in which the Matterhorn, bathed in warm alpenglow, looms in a dusk-colored sky above the darkened foothills. The visual language was simple and dynamic and after that, poster design never looked back. By the 1920's and 30's, the romantic images of Art Nouveau had been replaced by straight, clean lines borrowed from the Cubist and Futurist movements. Contrast, stylised structure, and dramatic color became important. Then came photography and photomontage and lithography gave way to offset technique (...). In: The Switzerland Advisor, 1994
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