Feb 29, 2024 - Sale 2660

Sale 2660 - Lot 289

Price Realized: $ 8,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

EDWARD MCKNIGHT KAUFFER (1890-1954)

SOARING TO SUCCESS! DAILY HERALD - THE EARLY BIRD. Circa 1973.


30x15¼ inches, 76¼x38¾ cm. UDO Ltd., London.
Condition A- / B+: time-staining, minor foxing and creases in bottom image and text. Paper.

Although he was born in America, McKnight Kauffer spent his most creative years in Great Britain, acting as the "Chef de file" of the new generation of poster artists. After his groundbreaking poster design for the Daily Herald was published in 1919 (based on his seminal work Flight), he received commissions from many major clients, the most important being London Transport, for which he designed 141 posters over a span of 20 years. "His 1919 poster, Flight, alluded to Vorticism, a British movement influenced by Cubism and Futurism that leaned toward machine-like forms - by Kauffer's reckoning 'the first and only Cubist poster design in England'" (Aiga.org). This version of Daily Herald is a smaller, posthumous version, likely published in 1973 to correspond with a traveling Kauffer exhibit developed by the V&A. Rare.

V&A E.35-1973, Kauffer 9, Affiche Art Deco p. 150, Modern Poster 81 (var), Avant Garde p. 68 (var), Poster Purpose p. 165 (var), Weill 401 (var), Cooper Hewitt 1963-39-1229.