A pop-up exhibit and sale of vintage posters from one of the largest vintage poster collections in the world is opening this weekend for just two days at the Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg.
The posters, from Hawaiian collector Alan Dickar, span roughly 100 years. “The posters start in the art nouveau and belle époque periods when posters really hit the French scene with Toulouse Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha,” said Hammerfriar Gallery co-owner Charly Leys. “There are also some great posters from the mid-century and the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”
The show includes posters by Lautrec, playful posters by early 20th century Italian poster artist Leonetto Cappiello, as well as a poster for Chanel by Andy Warhol, and works by modern poster master Razzia.
The newer posters were made with offset printing, but the older posters are stone lithographs. “They used huge slabs of limestone to do these printings,” Leys said. “You can tell by this kind of crayon texture. The limestone is porous so that it translates as graininess.”
Most of the posters in the exhibit are European and American. “They’re from France, Switzerland, Germany, America, but no one quite rivals the French in terms of collecting,” Leys said.
“The French loved these posters; they made a lot of them, and they held onto them. They weren’t worth any money at the time, but the French public recognized them as beautiful, and so they started collecting them. It became a big phenomenon, and then they were passed down through families. Posters were popular in Italy too, but so many of them were burned during the war.”
Even the oldest posters are beautifully preserved. “The posters are generally made from very fragile paper because they weren’t created to last, and most of them didn’t — they were just pasted up outdoors. These have been sent to a paper conservator. They’re washed to deacidify the old paper, so the acidification you see here,” she motions to the slight yellowing on the edge of one poster, “is neutralized. And then they’re wet mounted onto canvas with a barrier of acid free paper. It’s a good archival mount.”
The European posters are mostly travel, food and alcohol advertisements, while the mid-century American posters reflect travel and military themes, Leys said.
“I love how posters capture their time,” said Leys. “Bicycles and trains and aperitifs in the late 19th Century, and later travel, fashion and cosmetics. I love how culture and history are embedded in objects. To have these actual physical vestiges of the past that we still get to see and enjoy — the way they were freshly seen from the get go — it’s like a form of transportation into to the past.”
Despite their commercial themes, Leys feels the posters read more like art than advertising. “They’re so unassuming,” she said. “These artists were not creating something that was meant to be viewed for generations. They were giving a little snapshot of the dreams and aspirations — and the social constructs — of their day. Our advertising today is so duplicitous, whereas these seem innocent in comparison — like a picture of a beautiful lady or a diver with a bottle of wine. It’s funny and light-hearted and sweet, and I think that’s why they still appeal to people 100 years later.”
This pop-up exhibit and sale runs Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 15-16, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hammerfriar Gallery, 132 Mill St., in Healdsburg.
