?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
RICHARD N. ROLAND-HOLST (1868-1938) FAUST. 1918. 431/2x311/2 inches. Senefelder. Condition B+: creases in image. Roland Holst, a multi-talented artist who worked in many different mediums, was the Dutch champion of Art Nouveau, and went on to become the director of the Rijks Akademie. Throughout is career he only designed 16 posters, the best of which were for the theatre. Among his most famous and rarest images are Lucifer (see Swann Modernist Posters, catalogue #2006, lot 8), and this poster for Faust. Both are composed along a strict vertical axis. Here the Devil is tempting Dr. Faust in the center of the image. Above them, a fiery inferno is represented by a tour-de-force of red Art Nouveau swirls. The image is kept perfectly balanced by the inclusion of two black bells in the corners, and the typography, in Roland-Holst's usual fashion, is grouped at the bottom. Only two colors were used in the printing of this classic poster. Modern Dutch p. 61, Dutch History 150 [A history of dutch posters].
