‘Syphilis: L’Hecatombe’ (“The Mass Slaughter of Syphilis”) by Louis Raemaekers, 1922. Dutch soldiers returning home from the front with “The French Pox” caused a massive spike in STD-related deaths in the years following the war.
My pal Thomas Negovan owns the Century Guild gallery. Originally founded in Chicago in 1999, in December 2012 he opened a location in the Culver City Arts District of Los Angeles. Tom specializes in Art Nouveau and Symbolist works from Germany, Austria, France, and Italy done between 1880-1920, and includes the lithography of significant artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Alphonse Mucha, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; important Symbolist Artworks; and artifacts from the silent film era and German cabaret. Works from his collection are on permanent display in The Art Institute of Chicago, The Detroit Institute of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This Christmas season, the gallery has selected some of their most macabre and fantastic posters to be printed as limited edition Patronage Prints. Priced under $50, they’ll certainly make… unusual presents for all the weirdos (and drug addicts) on your shopping list…
‘Shadows and Light’ by Walter Schnackenberg is a 1919 Munich cabaret performance depicting a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ theme.
Fritz Lang wrote the silent film script of a woman leading men to their demise in ‘The Dance of Death’ (1919).
A poster advertising the The Grand-Guignol theater, a legendary landmark of terror. Performances there ran the gamut from horror to comedy, stimulating both extremes of human response.
The mad monk Rasputin was the subject of a number of silent films following his most peculiar demise; this poster is for a Danish release.
‘Opium,’ one of the landmark Weimar-era exploitation films. Poster art by Theo Matejko, 1919.
‘The Victims of Alcohol’ (1911) was a wildly successful anti-alcohol film when it was released in the US; temperance leagues bought out entire screenings to fill the seats with the public.
‘Alraune’ is the original “Bad Seed” storyline; based on the novel by horror icon Hanns Heinz Ewers, a woman born of mandrake and the semen of a criminal grows up as the perfect child… until she learns her bitter origin and with the tool of seduction leaves death and destruction in her wake.
‘Cocaine,’ a 1923 French musical, takes place in Montmartre beneath the specter of madness.
Grant Morrison and Asia Ray of AMC’s ‘Freakshow’ in front of an original poster from one of the first notable horror films, ‘The Student of Prague’ (Germany, 1926) at the opening party at Century Guild in Los Angeles.
Posters for the silent films ‘Leibelei’ (Germany, 1927) and ‘Nostradamus’ (Italy, 1925).
American poster for the Fritz Lang-penned ‘Dance of Death’ (‘Der Totentanz’ 1919) with ‘Les Vampyres’ painting by Gail Potocki and a collage of the “social hygiene film” starring Anita Berber, ‘Die Prostitution’ (Germany, 1919).