ADOLPHE MOURON CASSANDRE (1901-1968) CHEMIN DE FER DU NORD. 1929. 77 1/2x50 1/8 inches, 197x127 1/2 cm. L. Danel, Lille. Condition B+: repaired tears through top and bottom margins, affecting image; creases and abrasions in margins and image; restoration along vertical and horizontal folds. Framed. In 1927 Cassandre began working for the Chemins de fer du Nord and designed two posters, the l'Etoile du Nord and the Nord Express. At the same time he also redesigned the cover of the Railroad Company's magazine. That design, which was reused for every issue, features a compass needle that appears very similar to this poster (see Swann Modernist Poster Auction #1935 lot 37). Two years later, for this poster in 1929, Cassandre combines some of the key graphic conceits of his two earlier posters (the fading perspective formed by the converging rails and telegraph lines and the star balancing on the rails themselves) with the large image of a compass needle. The graphic rendering of the needle and its shadow are extremely elaborate, and use sophisticated airbrush work. Not only do the blue sky and smattering of clouds help the needle to stand out, but the large black "N" of the compass reinforces the "Nord" in the poster's title. "A good example of [Cassandre's] ideolographic approach . . . [this poster] derives its emotional strength from the ambiguous relationship between two superimposed images: the unexpected confrontation between the emphatically objective treatment of the compass needle, which seems to be resting on the surface of the poster, and the vastly poetic image of the tracks viewed through the graphically rendered compass dial. So explicit is this image that the cloudlike word Nord seems mainly to serve as a link between the two orders of reality" (Mouron p. 74). This is the rare larger format. Mouron / Cassandre pl. 16 (var), Suntory 52 p. 76 (var), Reina Sophia p. 167 (var).
