Bedos & Cie, Paris. Condition A: minor repaired tears at edges.
Colin created images for the plays, balls and music halls of Paris throughout the 1920s, when his work became synonymous with the city's cultural scene at the time. This is a rare piece for the artist in that it is a travel poster for an American airline. Here, Colin scales back his signature Art Deco style in favor of a simpler aesthetic, showing a TWA Constellation circling the globe, half of which is covered in night's shadow
This is one of the most inventive of Paul Colin's commercial posters. Against a grass-green background, suggestive of the leisure implied by the product's name, Colin shows an almost bird's-eye view of three people relaxing and enjoying their cigarettes. The persepctive, the colors and the use of the diagonal provide a very striking image. Colin may have been inspired by the similarity the motion of opening a hinged pack of cigarettes has with unfolding a deck chair. Colin 173, Crouse p. 220.
In assessing Colin's piano posters, his first, and by far the best, was for Wiener et Doucet in 1925 - a soft, geometrically-balanced poster. In 1927, he took the piano to further Cubist abstraction in an exquisite poster for Lisa Duncan. In 1929 he used this comfortable Cubist approach again for André Renaud, a virtuoso who could play two pianos at the same time.
