May 03, 2018 - Sale 2476

Sale 2476 - Lot 143

Price Realized: $ 12,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
CHARLES LOUPOT (1892-1962) VOISIN AUTOMOBILES. 1923.
47 1/4x31 1/2 inches, 120x80 cm. Devambez, Paris.
Condition B+: repaired tears and creases in margins; restored losses in lower corners.
In 1923, Gabriel Voisin, the luxury car manufacturer, commissioned Loupot (who had just returned to Paris after years in Switzerland) to design a pair of posters promoting his automobiles. The results are two dramatically different images. This poster is minimalistic, with a small red car against what is essentially an all-white background. The second image is the exact opposite - a colorless car starkly highlighted against a vividly-drawn, verdant forest depicted in a Cezanne-esque style (See Swann sale 2449 Lot 97). The effect these two images had was such that R.L. Dupuy, the head of a prominent Parisian advertising agency at the time, remarked that the posters "dropped like two stones in the frog-pond of the advertising imagination" (Weill p. 207). 2nd Salon Automobile 52, Modern Poster 172, Crouse p. 54, Reina Sofia p. 143.