?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
EDWARD MCKNIGHT KAUFFER (1890-1954) GREAT WESTERN TO DEVON'S MOORS. 1933. 39 3/8x24 1/4 inches. William Brown & Co., LTD., London. Condition B+: restored losses along lower right edge, affecting text; repaired tears through top edge; creases in image. "Obsessed by cubism, Kauffer introduced many elements of the emerging modern art movement to his posters in a bold, but fluid style." (http://www.designmuseum.org/design/london-transport). Anthony Blunt, reviewing a show of Kauffer's work in 1935 notes the following: "Apart from producing admirable posters, Mr. Kauffer has rendered another important service to modern art. By using the methods of more advanced schools and by putting them before the men in the street in such a way as to catch them off their guard, so that they are lured into liking the poster before they realize that it is just the kind of thing which they loath in the exhibition gallery, by this means he has familiarized a very wide public with the conventions of modern painting and has greatly increased the chances which modern painters, who are not involved in publicity, have of being appreciated and widely enjoyed." (Kauffer p. 70). Or as T. S. Eliot wrote of Kauffer, "He did something for modern art with the public as well as doing something for the public with modern art." (ibid). Kauffer p. 71, Modern Poster 178.
