Artists' posters

At the end of the nineteenth century the boundaries and hierarchy between the various artistic disciplines began to fade. Prominent painters became very interested in and experimented with the graphic arts, and this in turn helped professional illustrators and poster designers achieve recognition as artists. Improvements and innovations in printing and printmaking techniques, coupled with the ever-increasing speed and quality of reproduction procedures and the widespread use of advertising as a substantial part of economic, social and cultural activity expanded the limits of graphic illustration. Hitherto confined to books and periodical publications, it now colonised city streets in the form of attractive publicity posters, turning them into spectacular art galleries.

Following the emergence of the early twentieth-century avant-garde movements, which shunned traditional concepts of art, and the development of the consumer society, the poster became established as a transforming means of mass communication in which many creators from various artistic fields experimented with techniques and themes.