Apr 24 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2702 -

Sale 2702 - Lot 78

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

JEAN CARLU (1900-1997)

MON SAVON . . . C'EST . . . "MONSAVON." 1925.

60½x44¾ inches, 153¾x113½ cm. Éditions d'Art Robert Lang, Paris.
Condition B+: repaired tears, creases, abrasions and overpainting in margins and image and along vertical and horizontal folds.

In the early 1920s Carlu became friendly with a neighbor, the young cubist painter Jean Souverbie. This relationship pointed his art in a new direction. In his much later years, Carlu recalled how a lecture by Juan Gris marked a turning point in his life. Cubism began to play a major role in the young artist's work and he began exploring brand new paths of graphic design. Carlu was lucky enough to have a major project accepted: Mon Savon. This poster is very important, as it is the first in which Carlu put the Cubist influences into practice. He was free to use this new form of artistic expression because his clients Philippe de Rothschild (for whom he designed the 1925 Mouton Rothschild wine label) and Andre Wismer, were young and open to modernist ideas. A radical break from the posters in the style of Cappiello, this image presents an athletic man in his bathroom, proclaiming what soap he uses. It is accomplished with minimal detail and color, an orange triangle aimed dynamically at the public, with a bar of soap at its foremost angle. Within the triangle, a simple black outline delineates a torso and an arm. Surrounding it, in the same minimalist manner, Carlu evokes the decor of a bathroom. In his sparse design, "nothing was missing that supports the expression and formation of associations of ideas, and on which there was not a single unnecessary line or spot of color" (Výtvarné Snahy 1929-30, p. 180). This poster was immediately successful and admired within France as well as around Europe.

Crouse p. 74, Carlu 10, Weill 349, Reina Sofia p. 89, Vendre July 1930, p. 42.
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