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Lucien Bernhard
Prietster Matchstick, Graphic Object poster advertisement by Lucian Bernhard
c. 1910

Price:$1,940

$2,200List Price

About the Item

Lucian Bernhard’s Object Poster advertisement for Priester Matchsticks, stone lithograph published by Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin, circa 1910. “Lucian Bernhard was the most innovative Berlin-based designer of his era. Bernhard’s importance to the history of graphic design cannot be overestimated. “Bernhard owes his aesthetic style to a major 1898 design exhibition held at Munich’s Glaspalast that showcased the French art nouveau graphics of Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Alphonse Mucha, as well as the English Arts and Crafts design team known as The Beggarstaffs, comprised of James Pryde and William Nicholson. The Beggarstaffs pioneered the use of cut colored paper to create their designs, which juxtaposed flat forms and patterns with positive and negative shapes. A number of Beggarstaff poster maquettes were on exhibition in the Munich show. Bernhard returned from this exhibition “drunk with color” and repainted his parents’ traditional apartment in brilliant hues. After a terrible dispute with his father, Bernhard settled in Berlin where he submitted a design to a poster competition sponsored by the Priester Match Company. Bernhard’s winning Priester poster (1905) is considered an icon of modernist graphic design. The poster launched Bernhard’s career and is considered a watershed moment in the history of graphic design. At the age of 23, Bernhard opened his own studio with 30 employees. In 1920, he was made the first professor of graphic design at the Berlin School of Arts and Crafts.” (Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) “Sachplakat's inventor, an 18-year-old German cartoonist who called himself Lucian Bernhard, entered a poster competition in 1906 sponsored by Berlin's Priester Match Company and Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Germany's leading poster printer/advertising agency. As the origin myth goes, Bernhard's first sketch was characteristically Art Nouveau/Jugendstil: It showed a cigar in an ashtray on a checked table cloth with dancing nymphets formed by the intertwining wafting tobacco smoke. Next to the ashtray were two wooden matches. When it was mistakenly taken for a cigar advertisement, Bernhard was forced to rethink his composition and began eliminating the tablecloth, ashtray, cigar and smoke, leaving behind only two simple matches. He enlarged the matchsticks, made them red with yellow tips, and placed them against a maroon field. At the top of the image area he hand lettered in bold block letters the word "Priester." Voila! A new style! “The increase of vehicular traffic and the fast pace of everyday life required that advertisers compete furiously for the public's attention. Visual complexity no longer achieved the same contemplative results. There may have been other match companies in Germany in 1906, but once the Priester poster was hung on poster hoardings, no other brand entered consumers' mind. The object poster was best when hung in multiples, which created a rhythmic visual refrain: Priester, Priester, Priester.” (Steven Heller, The Object Poster, The Atlantic, 2012)

Creator:
Lucien Bernhard (1883 - 1972, German)
Creation Year:
c. 1910
Dimensions:
Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 9.25 in (23.5 cm)Depth: 0.1 in (2.54 mm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Period:
1910-1919
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Chicago, IL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU149328499202

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