Feb 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2695 -

Sale 2695 - Lot 112

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

EMIL CARDINAUX (1877-1936)

SALOME / CIGARETTES ORIENTALES. 1914.

55¼x39 inches, 140¼x99 cm. J.C. Muller, Zurich.
Condition A-: minor expert restoration in margins and image and along unobtrusive horizontal folds; small replaced loss at bottom left edge.

Cardinaux studied painting with Germany's von Stuck, and also worked in Paris before returning to Switzerland where he became one of the founding fathers of Swiss poster art. In 1908, his poster for Zermatt with its flat colors and broad outlining was a revolution in the Swiss graphic art world. And in 1914 he designed a Fauvist image of a yellow horseman astride a green horse to promote a Swiss Exhibition (an image which proved to be scandalous, as it was on such a patriotic subject that the normally passive Swiss surprised everyone by rallying against it). This same Fauvist approach can be recognized here, in a poster he created the same year. Sensuously evoking smoke and the exotic Far East through a lithe, curvy dancer, Cardinaux employs flat surfaces in crude colors with a strong painterly rendering to help build a powerful Orientalist image. This style is dramatically different from the soft-toned almost watercolor-like tourist posters he designed later in his career.

Cardinaux 39, Schweiz p. 32.
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