?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 30,000 - $ 40,000
MAISON PRUNIER. 1934 117x79 inches. Condition A-: minor creases along vertical and horizontal folds. 5 sheets. By 1934 Cassandre had abandoned his geometrical style of design and switched to a warmer, sensuous line. His poster for Maison Prunier clearly represents this change in style. Already well established in Paris, this poster was designed to announce the opening of Prunier'sLondon branch. The rendering of the table, fish, shell and lobster are marvelously drawn with warm tones. But Cassandre's magic also relies on the subtle way the table is positioned, beneath a halo of typography with the restaurant's name located right beneath the corner of the table, as if being highlighted by an arrow. This is one of the images that best exemplifies Cassandre's poetical approach to advertising. Prunier obviously invested heavily into this ad campaign as this poster exists in window size and in this billboard size, which involves buying large amounts of advertising space! As with every good poster the bigger the image the better it comes across, and this creation looks incomparably more powerful in this scale. Curiously, neither of the two formats of this poster have a printer's imprint, so it is uncertain where this poster was printed. Exceedingly rare, this bill-board format of the poster has never appeared at auction. Cassandre no. 171, p. 80, Weill-Cassandre p. 46-7, Suntory no. 41, p. 66.
