?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
MAURICE BIAIS (1875-1926) LA MAISON MODERNE. 1900. 45x30 1/2 inches, 114x78 cm. J. Minot, Paris. Condition B+: repaired tears, creases and staining in margins and image. Framed. The son of a rich public notary, Maurice Biais was a talented artist who designed numerous illustrations and graphics. He designed glass, ceramics and even murals for both Siegfried Bing and his gallery l'Art Nouveau as well as for Bing's competitor at the Maison Moderne, Meier-Graefe. Socially, however, Biais was no angel, and is remembered for his active Montmartre night life. In 1911, he married the performer Jane Avril, no angel herself, in a doomed, short-lived union. Throughout his career Biais traveled frequently, often to escape bad debts. He was a gambler, drinker and heavy smoker. He was not on speaking terms with his family and was known to disappear for weeks at a time. That said, he had a very original talent, which he used to design fewer than a dozen posters. Julius Meier-Graefe had spent time with the avant-garde artistic community in Berlin (where he had helped establish the influential magazine Pan) before he came to Paris. In 1898 he opened up La Maison Moderne a store dedicated to the art nouveau finery of the day, including pottery, glass, lamps and jewelry. He employed top notch designers like Van de Velde to help him design merchandise and called on some top poster designers, like Orazi and Maurice Biais, to create his advertising. Here, Biais shows an elegant woman admiring all of the goods on display in the spacious gallery. Extremely rare, this poster does not appear in Das Fruhe Plakat or in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Abdy p. 160, Gallo p. 128.
