Dec 20, 2006 - Sale 2099

Sale 2099 - Lot 103

Price Realized: $ 6,720
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
LUCIAN BERNHARD (1883-1972) STEINWAY & SONS. 1910.
26 1/4x36 1/2 inches.
Condition B: repaired tears, creases and abrasions in margins and image.
In 1906, at the age of 20, Lucian Bernhard won a poster design competition sponsored by Priester matches. Ernst Growald, the director of the Berlin printing establishment Hollerbaum & Schmidt, recognized his talent and immediately hired Bernhard. The young artist quickly developed a graphic design system that proved to be revolutionary in the advertising world. Bernhard was the father of the Sachsplakat (Object Poster), a style in which the object is depicted by itself, in flat colors, with no ornamentation and no shadow, against a monochromatic background with very large, bold typography. This poster, for the world-renowned piano company Steinway & Sons, is one of the best examples of Bernhard's style. A piano is by far the largest object Bernhard ever advertised, showing how the Object Poster style worked perfectly on any scale. The poster also appears with an additional text line at the bottom advertising the piano showroom's address. Bernhard 39, DFP-II 184 (var), Wember 69 (var), Weill 172.