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For this book, Theodore Menten has selected 363 ads, posters, trademarks, and other commercial graphics reproduced directly from magazines and books which appeared between 1924 and 1940.
The machine perfect geometry, elegance and power of Art Deco, the international style of the late '20s and '30s, was nowhere more appropriate, and appropriated, than for advertising art, which informed the "modern" consumer of all that was new whether practical or frightfully extravagant in design.
The works collected in this book come from nine countries and promote airlines, cigarettes, cosmetics, beverages, department stores, printers, art shows, basketball, and heavy industry with equal economy and flair. Automobiles and fashion, great specialties of this period, receive some emphasis, as do the many variants of this cosmopolitan style, influenced, as it was at times, by the Orient, ancient Egyptian and Myan art, the Cubists, Fauvists, Expressionists, and others.
The work of 108 artists and studios is gathered here, among them Cassandre, Julius Kilnger, Jean Carlu, Walter Teague, Georges Lepape, Darcy and Fritz Brill, whose advertisements gave notice also to the end of the old distinction between the industrial and fine arts. Art Deco remains in many cases synonymous with elegance and fashion, and these ads, which remind us of an earlier period, also show a remarkable vitality to designers and to everyone with an eye for graphic art.
by Theodore Menten
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