Read the full article at LGT Private Banking market view and insights (Sarah Murray, 31 May 2024) and click on the images for more information on the featured posters:
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Often designed by famous artists, vintage posters reflect aspects of everyday life. Speaking volumes about the nature of society at their time, posters have been highly collectible from the start.
In the late nineteenth century, cities like London and Paris were grey, drab, and dirty. Then in the 1880s, colour started exploding through the streets. It took the form of posters, which sometimes ran up three storeys of a building, advertising everything from cabarets and champagne, to cigarettes and soap. Today, these marketing tools are highly collectible works of art.
At the time, they would have made a striking impression, says Angelina Lippert, Chief Curator at Poster House, founded in 2015 as the US’s first poster museum. "If you weren’t rich, you would never have seen printed colour before," she says. "So people would gather around recently unveiled posters." ...
It was the "golden age of posters", known for the work of artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. But it also created a new art form that, by using dramatic imagery and punchy messages to present ordinary objects, has caught collectors’ imaginations ever since.
A new art form - ripe for collecting
"The great thing about posters is that no matter who you are or what you do, there is a poster that speaks to you," says Nicholas Lowry, President of New York’s Swann Auction Galleries and head of their Vintage Posters Department.
Vintage posters, now found in galleries or collectors’ homes, became desirable almost as soon as they were printed. ...
From collector to dealer
For some, a passion became a profession. This is true for Kirill Kalinin, who grew up in the former Soviet Union surrounded by Russian propaganda posters. After spending time as a collector, he founded AntikBar, a website and gallery on London’s King's Road specialising in vintage posters from around the world that cover everything from travel, sport, and cinema, to war and propaganda.
Kalinin is drawn to the powerful compositions and dazzling colours of posters, but also to what they reveal about the era in which they were created. "Each piece is very much of its time," he says. "It’s this combination of art and history, and the story behind each poster, that still really attracts me." ...
Collectors are as diverse as the posters that attract them. "People collect posters of the ships their families came to America on," says Lowry. "They collect posters from where they went on honeymoon, or based on hobbies like golf, tennis, or auto racing." ...
There’s a poster for everyone
Outside the film poster market, prices vary based on artist and rarity. "The middle of the market is between USD 5000 and USD 50 000," says Lippert, who spent a decade as a poster specialist at a New York auction house. "But there are posters for a couple of hundred dollars and ones that are hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Value also depends on a poster’s condition. And views differ on whether linen-backing is the best conservation solution. Experts agree, however, that protecting posters from sunlight is critical, best done by keeping them rolled up, laying them flat in drawers, framing them using conservation UV filtration glass, or hanging them away from windows.
Experts also emphasise the importance of using respected or accredited dealers ...
What’s the next big poster trend?
For those hoping to catch the wave of a rising market, identifying poster trends is a complex business. "It depends on who has the money and what their taste is at the time," says Lippert. While certain genres, periods, and subjects remain in constant demand - such as golden-age French posters and ski resort posters from the twenties and thirties - real-world trends can push up prices.
Kalinin points to India, where growing affluence is creating a new cohort of collectors. Looking ahead, he believes that space tourism could prompt demand for vintage space propaganda and film posters related to space travel.
Sometimes, a single event boosts the market. Kalinin cites the 2012 Disney acquisition of the Star Wars franchise. "Prices shot up for everything Star Wars related," he says. "Because people realised the franchise would carry on and there would be a new batch of collectors coming into this universe." ...
Read more at https://www.lgt.com/global-en/market-assessments/insights/lifestyle/poster-art-the-ephemera-that-became-collectible-217116 and browse all our original vintage posters from around the world at our gallery and online (with worldwide delivery):
AntikBar - Original Vintage Posters
404 King's Road, Chelsea, London SW10 0LJ
www.AntikBar.co.uk || www.AntikbarBooks.co.uk || www.AntikbarAuctions.com
AntikBar is a Member of the International Vintage Poster Dealers’ Association (IVPDA), the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association (ABA), and The Association of Art and Antiques Dealers (LAPADA).