René Gruau is a useful reminder that a poster does not need to shout to stop you looking at it.
A few lines, a silhouette and one strong colour can be enough. Gruau’s fashion illustration has an elegance that looks spontaneous even when the composition is doing something very deliberate.
His career ran through couture, beauty, magazines and luxury advertising at a time when fashion illustration still had enormous commercial importance. Photography eventually changed that world, but Gruau’s work never feels like a lesser substitute for a photograph. Drawing is the whole point.
We like his posters because they sit slightly outside the collecting routes people usually associate with us. You can arrive through fashion, graphic design, French advertising or simply because the image looks fantastic on a wall.
As with many famous commercial artists, the same design can exist in different printing contexts. We want the date of the artwork and the date of the physical poster kept distinct whenever they are not the same.
What to Look For When Collecting Gruau
The same illustration can surface in different printing contexts over the years. Keep the date of the original artwork and the date of the physical poster in front of you as two separate questions.
Original Posters by René Gruau
A live look at René Gruau posters currently in the Printed Originals collection.
