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Lot Essay
Dutch architect, manufacturer and industrial designer Willem Gispen created this poster advertising the ship Aldabi travelling between Rotterdam and South America.
Although Gispen's figurative image of the liner shows his loosley held attachment to De Stijl, his juxtaposition of primary colours in block areas and in typography reflect an absorption of the movement's ideals. The positioning of text in vertical as well as horizontal spaces is highly original and reflects an interest in rectangular geometry so idiomatic of De Stijl.
In 1936, the poster was selected for an exhibition on Cubism and Abstract art held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition was "intended as an historical survey of an important movement in modern art" (Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936).
Although Gispen's figurative image of the liner shows his loosley held attachment to De Stijl, his juxtaposition of primary colours in block areas and in typography reflect an absorption of the movement's ideals. The positioning of text in vertical as well as horizontal spaces is highly original and reflects an interest in rectangular geometry so idiomatic of De Stijl.
In 1936, the poster was selected for an exhibition on Cubism and Abstract art held in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition was "intended as an historical survey of an important movement in modern art" (Alfred H. Barr Jr., founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in Cubism and Abstract Art, 1936).