Oct 02, 2003 - Sale 1978

Sale 1978 - Lot 10

Price Realized: $ 5,520
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
STATENDAM. 1928.
403/4x311/2 inches. [Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Holland].
Condition B: expertly restored losses in margins; repaired tears and creases in image.
Statendam is the first "classic" steamship poster Cassandre designed. The success of l'Etoile du Nord (the train connecting Paris to Amsterdam) made Cassandre so famous in Holland that J. Th. Pieck, the director of Nigh & Van Ditmar, a large Dutch advertising agency, contacted Cassandre to become his exclusive agent in Holland. Cassandre worked on all of the company's major accounts: Oranjenboom Beer, Van Nelle, De Vries Robbe and Holland America Line. For this image, Cassandre depicts a marvelously balanced layout of funnels and air vents. He works in a palette far different from his usual color scheme, which in this period was predominantly blue, sticking with the corporate colors of the shipping company, and pairing them flawlessly with a gray border. As is usual with many of his masterpieces, it is the small details that are not noticed at first that help to build the image as a complex whole; here it is the white mast ropes. The typography is splendid. Mouron / Cassandre pl. 13, Weill / Cassandre p. 17, Suntory 69, p. 93.