7 July 2022
Three times a year, the APG|SGA ePoster Gallery brings the charm of historic posters to life and tells the stories behind them, from the last century right up to the present day. The newly launched exhibition invites visitors to enjoy the ‘delights of dance’ and shines a spotlight on the striking depiction of dance movements. To this end, thirty Swiss cultural posters from 1922 to 2016 have been selected from the poster collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
Dance can be wonderfully fluid, precise, fiery or elegant. How can these different movements be depicted on cultural posters? Poster artists have been grappling with this question for decades, constantly devising new creative approaches. The most outstanding examples remain astonishingly timeless to this day. Take, for example, a true classic: ‘Zürcher Presseball’ by Ernst Keller. The illustration of the dancing couple is strikingly minimalist and contemporary. If this poster were to be reprinted and displayed again today, at first glance it would be almost impossible to guess that the subject dates back to 1932.
The APG|SGA ePoster Gallery offers further opportunities to identify artistic periods, featuring a total of thirty dance posters dating from 1922 to 2016. The selection was made by Nico Lazúla, a curator at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich.
An Overview of Poster Art
The poster collection at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is one of the world’s most significant archives of its kind. Around 350,000 items, of which some 150,000 have been catalogued, document the history of the poster in Switzerland and internationally, from its beginnings to the present day. From this collection, a loose series of virtual exhibitions is being created for the APG|SGA ePoster Gallery, which has been providing financial and cultural support to the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich for many years. The diversity in historical, thematic and geographical terms enables a comprehensive overview of poster art.