Jupp Wiertz Poster Art

A lot of artistic talent and effort went into poster design and illustration during the first several decades of the twentieth century, especially in Europe. I have already written about German artists Ludwig Hohlwein and Werner Axster-Heudtlass. The present post deals with Jupp Wiertz (1888-1939), another capable German illustrator. Unfortunately, I could find little about him in English, but his Wikipedia entry in German is fairly substantial.

Wiertz was versatile, as the images below indicate.

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The first posters shown above seem to have been done in the 1920s and even before. By the 1930s, he was illustrating travel posters such as this one featuring Aachen. Note the touches of color at the street cafe and market, contrasting with the drab background elements -- a clever touch.

A rather extensive collection of elements here. The background is clearly New York City, but the presence of silhouetted palm trees puzzles me: a reference of California? Brazil, even? The ocean liner, airplane and Zeppelin obviously are travel means, and the silhouettes evoke Germany.

This is nicely dramatic, a Berlin view of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche on the Kurfürstendamm with its busy traffic.

Harry Grant Dart's Circa-1908 Multi-Winged Future

Harry Grant Dart (1869-1938) was an illustrator and cartoonist active in the early part of the last century. Around 1907-10 he created a number of scenes depicting what he saw as future developments in aviation. The illustration above, "Going into Action," is from 1907, and shows aerial combat of a form curiously like a naval action on the ocean's surface. Bear in mind that the Wright Brothers had flown for the first time less that four years before and the Great War was seven years in the future, so his conjecture can't be strongly criticized.

In any case, it's an exciting scene, with deck guns blazing and crewmen maneuvering a craft using what looks like a ship's wheel. The aircraft are not the boxy, kite-like affairs found in 1907. Instead, they have sleek fuselages surmounted by dragonfly-like wings or else are bird-like monoplanes. Missing is a lot of maneuvering in the vertical plane, but in 1907 the airplanes he knew about were content to be flown at a pretty constant altitude.

Dart's brief Wikipedia entry is here, and a link dealing with his cartoon work is here.

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Air-sea battle at night - 1910
Night sea battles were a rarity, and suggesting that aircraft might be part of the mix was an audacious prediction by Dart.

A Look into the Future - 1908
Another future combat scene. Shore-based artillery in the foreground. Battleships toward the horizon. What might be submarines or high-speed torpedo boats near the shore (it's hard to tell what Dart was depicting here). And that large aircraft sprouting wings in every direction. Oh, and I see something that could be a rocket or missile. Dart was really cookin' when he dreamed this up.

Transcontinental Flyer - 1909
Hard to say what's going on here. The aircraft doesn't seem to have crashed. More likely it landed on the mountaintop so that men could climb off and do some exploring or research nearby.

Transport of the Future
Note the swept-back wings on this job. Very sleek, but like the rest of his imaginary creations, unflyable in reality.

From Harper's - 11 June 1910
Huge wings and delicate frameworks, not to mention a boat-like fuselage with a small fore-deck for observers.

Frank Wootton's Poster Art

Frank Wootton (1911-1998) is best known for his aircraft and automobile paintings and illustrations, but he also painted landscapes and illustrated travel posters, among other projects. The main biographical information I found on the Web was this obituary from the Independent that incorrectly has his birth year as 1914.

Wootton's poster work was done in a nice, clear style that nevertheless included plenty of detail to add visual interest.  His posters for air travel tend to have compositions where the main subject matter is curiously peripheral. Well, maybe not so curious after all, because a tiny image of an airliner can be found in those big, otherwise blank skies.

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Wootton did a few posters for Britain's nationalized railway system after World War 2.

This is his painting for a poster titled "By Rail to Wales."

Below are some posters illustrated for BOAC, Britain's main international airline of the 1950s.

The poster immediately above is a personal favorite because I've always liked the way Wootton handled highlights on his automobile illustrations. The scene itself seems to be imaginary, an evocation of New York-ness from a foreign perspective. The cars are also imaginary, but suggestive of General Motors styling from around 1950. Wootton chose to portray American cars as being lower than they actually were in those days.

Rico Tomaso: Edge-of-the-Radar Illustrator

Rico Tomaso (1898-1985) was active when mass-circulation "glossy" (referring to printing stock) magazines were riding high and illustration was still king. Maybe that has to do with why he is nearly unknown today. There were plenty of illustrators at work then including many of the best ever, and while Tomaso was very good, he wasn't quite top-tier. Or perhaps his luck wasn't quite as good as some more famous illustrators who weren't as talented (I could name names, but leave that as an exercise for you readers for now).

A side-effect is that there is little biographical information available on the Internet regarding Tomaso. His Wikipedia entry relies heavily on a tiny entry in one of Walt Reed's books on illustrators. It mentions that Tomaso was a teacher as well as an active illustrator, and that he also did fine art painting.

Therefore, all I can do for now is present for your evaluation some images of his that I could find on the Internet.

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An Introduction

Flamenco dancer

Man wearing pith helmet

Men's hat industry advertisement - 1952

Indian Wedding
This was one of a series depicting weddings in different parts of the world.

Star Light, Star Bright
Successful illustrators often had to change their style to keep up with fashions in the field. This 1940s vintage illustration reminds me of Harry Anderson's work at that time.  I like the colors and brushwork.

Center of Attention - 1934
Very nice early-1930s upper-crust atmosphere here. Yes, there was a Depression going on, but Hollywood, Broadway and the slick magazines didn't lose their audience when they ignored it.

John Held, Jr: Flapper Art ... and More

A confession is in order. Back when I was in high school, I became fascinated with the 1920s along with cartoons by John Held, Jr. (1889-1958) that exemplified the Flaming Youth aspect of those times. I even used a variation of his style to decorate the high school yearbook for my Junior year. Now that I'm spilling the beans, I'll further confess that I am still fascinated with the Twenties (Thirties, too!) and Held's work.

Held's Wikipedia entry is here, and another link that focuses more on his art is here.

As best I can tell from casual observation, Held continues to be thought of as the master flapper era cartoonist, though I now consider his rival Russell Patterson (see link here and my post about him here) better in that vein. That said, let's view some of Held's work.

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The three images above indicate the range of Held's versatility. The New York cityscape watercolor is dated 1936, after his cartooning heyday. The engraving is one of a series of 1890s scenes published in the New Yorker magazine edited by Harold Ross, Held's high school classmate. I never liked these, but they were popular with Ross, at least. The Life cover at the bottom is atypical, but shows that Held could mimic (or satirize?) movie star magazine covers by the likes of Rolf Armstrong.

Now to Held's cartooning that brought him fame. This is from a Life magazine cover depicting a young woman getting her tresses trimmed, completing her transition to Roaring Twenties flapperdom.

Many of Held's cartoons were done using thin lines mixed with areas of black and (occasionally) patterns. Women were invariably slender and usually had the same sort of face. Men were usually depicted with large, rounded heads.

Readers familiar with American or Canadian football should be able to grasp Held's joke here. For the rest of you, the best I can say is that "Hold 'em!" is what football fans sometimes call out when the opposing team is advancing towards the goal line.

More examples of Held's spare, somewhat Art Deco-like cartoon style.

The Mysterious Manuel Orazi

Manuel Orazi (1860-1934) was an Italian with a Spanish first name whose career was spent mostly in Paris doing Art Nouveau style illustration when he wasn't involved in depicting the occult. And that's pretty much all that is known about him.

Actually, there is more. But as often seems to be the case, it is in bits and pieces scattered across the Internet. If, having seen the images below and you are curious about Orazi, link here, here, here, here and here.

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Sarah Bernhardt - c.1895

Theatre de Loïe Fuller

Job cigarette papers poster

Poster for Boulevard de Clichy Hippodrome

La Belle sans nom (The Pretty Girl Without a Name) - Le Figaro Illustré - January 1900

Poster for La Maison Moderne (Modern Home) - 1902

L'Atlantide poster - c.1920-21

La reine Antinéa - L'Atlantide (Queen Antinéa) - 1920

Le lieutenant de Saint-Avit et la mort - L'Alantide (Lieutenant Saint-Avit with Death) - c.1920-21
These are related to the film L'Atlantide, which Orazi had a hand in besides poster work.

Paris by Night - Dance Club in Montmartre
A late work with no trace of Art Nouveau or the occult.

Yoshihiro Inomoto: Putting Emotion into Tech Illustration

What's going on here?

I really wanted to feature a couple automotive cutaway illustrations by the great Yoshihiro Inomoto (b. 1932), but most of the best are under extremely heavy copyright protection for reasons I find hard to understand. Seems to me, providing plenty of web publicity for Inomoto's work would increase sales of printed images and therefore benefit the copyright holders, but whadda I know. At any rate, I think I'm safe from prison by displaying publicity materials for an Inomoto exhibition I found on a Russian web site (see above).

Unfortunately, those materials really don't provide the full impact of an Inimoto illustration. So you need to link here for some fine (and copyright protected) images.

The site also includes biographical information on Inomoto as well as some fascinating details regarding how he works. It seems that he begins by making freehand drawings and then refines these using traditional mechanical drawing tools such ellipse templates. An alternative he apparently rejected was to begin by constructing detailed three-view drawings and then projecting to a 3-D image using architectural perspective techniques, something aviation artists often do. Another interesting twist is that Inomoto actually distorts some of the objects in an image such as brakes or the motor to suit his emotional reaction to the vehicle he's illustrating. This sort of thing must be pretty subtle, because I never noticed it before.

So this is about all I can do for now. Please visit the link. If what you see interests you, you can find images via a Google search.