May 25, 2017 - Sale 2449

Sale 2449 - Lot 256

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
VARIOUS ARTISTS MEXICO / JUEGOS DE LA XIX OLIMPIADA. Group of 4 posters. 1968.
Each approximately 35 1/2x35 inches, 90 1/4x90 cm.
Condition varies, generally B+.
159 different posters were created for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, 18 of which depicted sporting events, while the rest were culturally focused. The memorably designed logo for the games was the result of Eduardo Terrazos and Lance Wyman's combined effort, which was "neatly based on geometry . . . Wyman developed the five circles [of the Olympic rings symbol] into the year number '68,' then unified it with the lettering of the word 'Mexico' by means of radiating parallel lines" (Olympic Posters p. 78). The logotype "worked both as a dynamic example of 1960s Op Art, related immediately to its time and culture, and as an evocation of the pattern-making imagery of pre-Hispanic Mexican culture and the folk art of the Huichol Indians" (ibid. p. 79). As Wyman described it, it was "multidimensional integration of logos, typography and color, developed to communicate to a multilingual audience" (ibid. p. 78).