Beach and Resort Posters--The Next Best Thing to the Beach

San Sebastian, 1956. Estimate: $800 to $1,200.

Can't make it to the beach this weekend? Fear not. Swann's Vintage Posters exhibition, which opens today, features an assortment of beach and summer resort posters. Whether you prefer the south of France, Bermuda, California or Cape Cod, there's a poster to suit all types of beach-goers. 

Adolph Treidler, Furness Cruises to Bermuda and the West Indies, Estimate: $2,000 to $3,000.

Adar Lanz, Onival Sur Mer / Chemins de Fer de l'Est et du Nord, circa 1905. Estimate: $1,000 to $1,500.

Julien Lacaze, Côte d'Azur, 1935. Estimate: $1,000 to $1,500. Western Airlines / Los Angeles, circa 1965. Estimate: $700 to $1,000.

The London Underground

Opening today at the Museum of Modern Art is a small exhibit, Underground Gallery: London Transport Posters 1920s-1940s, which includes approximately 20 posters that decorated London subway stations in the interwar years. Modernist poster designers featured in the exhibition include Edward McKnight Kauffer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Abram Games. Many of these British underground posters will appear at Swann's Travel Poster auction in November. 


A similar exhibition, Art for All: British Posters for Transit, is on view at the Yale Center for British Art through August 15th. 


Edward McKnight Kauffer, Winter Sales are Best Reached by the Underground, 1922. Sold on November 11, 2005 for $2,990.

Scenes of the City: Prints, Drawings & Paintings of New York City 1900 - 2000

Edward Hopper, Night Shadows, etching, 1921. Estimate: $30,000 to $50,000. 

At auction September 16th.

The kick-off for Swann's fall 2010 season is Scenes of the City: Prints, Drawings & Paintings of New York City 1900 - 2000. The September 16th sale features iconic print images of New York, with a particular emphasis on works done by the Ashcan School at the turn of the 20th century, through Depression-era studies. Landmark locations, including the Brooklyn Bridge, Grand Central Station and Fifth Avenue, as well as everyday scenes of children and couples enjoying Manhattan, are all represented. Artists in the sale include Martin Lewis, Edward Hopper, Childe Hassam, Louis Lozowick, Lewis Sloan and Reginald Marsh. 

Timely Mather Work Incentive Posters to Hit Auction Block

Ready to Spring!, 1929. Estimate: $2,000 to $3,000. 

Mather Work Incentive Posters, designed and published in Chicago between 1923-1929, were graphic and catchy posters intended to boost worker productivity. The August 4th Vintage Posters auction at Swann features 23 of these colorful posters, including two that are quite timely for today.





A Hole in the Gas Tank, 1925. Estimate: $1,200 to $1,800; Willard Frederick Elmes, A Leak in the Tank!, 1929. Estimate: $1,500 to $2,000.

Swann Celebrates Flatiron Chefs

Last night, some Swann staffers attended Celebrate Flatiron Chefs!, from the Madison Square Park Conservancy, of which Swann Galleries is a member. In addition to tasting food from the participating area restaurants, the exhibit Antony Gormley: Event Horizon, with life-size iron and fiberglass body forms, is still on view in the park and the surrounding neighborhood.  

The Cover & the Underground from the New York Observer

Loose Talk, Group of 9 posters, 1942. Estimate: $700 to 1,000. 
At auction August 4th. 

"The Secrets Issue" of The New York Observer (the July 12th issue) bears a familiar image on its cover—Dal Holcomb's 1942 WWII poster, which is featured in Swann's August 4th Vintage Poster auction as part of a group lot with eight other posters. The caption "Loose Talk Can Cost Lives" provides a friendly reminder in a time when people share every intimate detail of their lives online. 

Further inside the issue is the article "Underground Art," with a map to various art installations buried deep within the confines of the New York City subway system. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Al Loving and Sol LeWitt, all of whom have had work at auction at Swann in the past year, are mentioned for their iconic mosaics and stained-glass windows that bring color and style beneath the city.