?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
LUDWIG HOHLWEIN (1874-1949) ST. PAUL / DIE QUALITÄTS ZIGARETTE. 38 3/4x27 3/8 inches. Kunst Im Druck, Munich. Condition A: vertical and horizontal folds. Tobacco advertising, until very recently, when it was banned throughout the Western world, was always a major source of income for the advertising world. Throughout his career, Hohlwein designed many posters for a variety of different brands. In contrast to the work Lucian Bernhard did for Manoli cigarettes, in which over many years Bernhard built a global communications concept and a visual brand identity, Hohlwein simply delivered one-shot, snappy images that presented their products in a status-enhancing way. Top hats seemed to impart the kind of luxury that Hohlwein wanted for his tobacco clients, and the haberdashery can be seen in his posters for Gratwohl and Gute Fegt (see Frenzel table 90 and 100). What makes each of these posters different is the way Hohlwein plays with shadow, light and back-lighting. Here, a dandy with his hat and cigarette both rakishly poised, is bathed in the yellow spotlights of a nightclub (you can see one of the instruments from the orchestra pit in the lower right). He is being admired by a showgirl in the background. Hohlwein has constructed the image so that his wealth, sophistication, choice of cigarette and resulting sex appeal are on full display.
