ANONYMOUS MACHINES AGRICOLES / C. PUZENAT. Circa 1930. 60x41 inches. Dam, Paris. Condition A-: repaired tear in right margin; abrasions in image. Between World Wars One and Two, the Damour brothers were an extremely dynamic advertising pair: They had an advertising agency (Damour), a publishing company for posters and catalogues (DAM) and also, in November 1923, they launched the magazine Vendre<> which, for nearly 50 years, was the major professional magazine for publicity in France and still serves today as one of the major sources of reference for the period. DAM, like the more famous printer Draeger, had a studio where posters artists would create posters, which although they remained anonymous (being signed only "Dam"), were often quite accomplished and had a distinctly modernist touch. It is clear that the designer of this good image had seen the poster designed by Charles Loupot for Austin Tractors in 1928. In this instance the over-all mise en page<> is less daring but the color scheme is similar, with a sharp blue to describe the metal of the plough and shades of brown for the earth. The typography, too, and the French cocarde (as used by Loupot in his 1926 poster for Peugeot) confirm that this poster is a tribute to the master by a contemporary young fan.
