on the wall

Many thanks to our friend Daniel,

we were astonished when we received the snapshots of the The Sting movie poster. Knowing it is his favourite movie makes us feel even happier with what we can see. Karel Machálek would be possibly also delighted, seeing it on such a great display. There is so much more than just love to his posters. Many are iconic by now and believe this marvel will be icon once, too.

Karel Machálek (b.1937) emigrated from Czechoslovakia to France in 1976. Believe he could have many reasons, but the main one was, that his exhibition in France / Lyon was taking longer than expected and Czechoslovak embassy did not want to extend his stay; he applied for asylum¹ .

This sort of courageous behaviour fits with Karel Machálek’s posters very well. His movie posters are just different dimension, nothing as such and they are indeed designed courageously. Karel Machálek left about 50 movie posters behind and every one of them talk. Not so much known, but together with painting/sculpture he was also poet with pseudonym Zlín. Collection of his early poems was not published in Czechoslovakia, until the end of Communism. We are very grateful for Karel Machálek’s addition to Czechoslovak poster art and also very glad seeing one of his movie poster, so beautifully preserved.

Thank you very much Daniel, to add white mount and framing pulls it out really nicely.

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Please explore wonderful movie posters of Karel Machálek in chronological order.
Or see other fascinating Paul Newman / Robert Redford movie posters in our shop / archive.

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Ref.
1. abArt archive / Karel Machálek.

Many thanks to Harriet,

for inviting us to her cosy little “showroom” and for taking such a beautiful care of two lovely movie posters from our archive. They look magnificent in their new surrounding and such a good combination, too. Two phenomenal, possibly most prolific poster designers of the time, both with full bag of poster awards and hundreds of poster designs in portfolio. We can be only astonished by amount/inventivness/variety of their work. While Zdeněk Ziegler was very much attached to graphic design, Karel Vaca was attracted to fine art, specially to abstract painting. Each of them influenced many and helped a lot with introducing Czechoslovak poster design internationally.

Zdeněk Ziegler’s poster design for The Wizz consists of only typeface, combination of Good Vibrations and Manuscript Caps (out of interest please, see also his Flashdance poster). It is excellent example of how far he would go when designing movie posters, truly fascinating. No words to what Karel Vaca did to Mona Lisa either :), such an intriguing, humorous artwork. It was possibly the first 60s Vaca’s poster we were holding in our hands few years back, it is deeply engraved on mind ever since. Karel Vaca was playing all over, nothing was sacred to him and most of the time one just stay speechless observing his art.

Most adorable, thank you so much for showing them to us!

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Please explore poster artwork of Karel Vaca / Zdeněk Ziegler in chronological order.
For all the information on typeface we thank to FONTS IN USE archive.

Thank you Claire and Séamus,

we’ve been beautifully touched when we’ve received your fantastic snapshots. Movie posters look fabulous, to add, black fits perfectly to both. Josef Vyleťal‘s Amarcord looks absolutely impressive, one can study any of his movie posters by millimetres. Only very recently we have learned that he was also designing movie sets for such a great directors as Juraj Jakubisko or Juraj Herz, his abilities were endless. Must say thanks to Communist regime and their ridiculous, believe if they would not be around, mr. Vyleťal is happily painting his surreal paintings and we would not be able to explore those beauties he created, well, who knows.

Different story to movie poster designing of Slovak fine artist Peter Kľúčik. His portfolio unlike that of Josef Vyleťal’s with over hundred posters (1964 – 1979) consists of only 5 illustrated movie posters (late 80’s). His main focus was lying on book illustration (many wonderful children books) and ex-libris that are full of surreal, unpredictable, sometimes even bizarre humour. There is great archive of Peter Kľúčik’s artwork in online archive of National Slovak Gallery.

Thank you for taking such lovely care of them !!

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Please explore fascinating movie posters of Peter Kľúčik / Josef Vyleťal in chronological order. Or see other interesting curiosities in our Federico Fellini / Italian Cinema archive.

Thanks to Patryk and his family,

for such an instant respond to our genuine poster observation request. We love to admire posters in their new places and it makes us very happy when we receive a snapshot.

We can’t express enough feelings towards Polish cinematography. Andrzej Wajda would fall into category of our favourite Polish directors. His Promised Land movie poster designed for Czechoslovak audience felt into hands of Dobroslav Foll, the man of many incredible talents and ways of working with his resources. We will be looking into his wonderful work in few months time and the research will be shown in our poster blog.

Black and white makes it look amazing, you really pulled out the maximum out of it. We like the results, thank you!!

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Discover other fascinating movie posters designed by Dobroslav Foll. Or see other interesting curiosities in our Andrzej Wajda / Polish Cinema archive.

Many thanks to Claire and Séamus,

for letting us to have a look at their wonderful Mama I’m Alive movie poster by Czech typographer, graphic and poster designer Miroslav Pechánek in it’s new environment. We are very happy to see his poster was treated with such a love and care and now it’s beautifully framed and on the wall. Artist did not designed more than 20 movie posters and his name appeared on the Czechoslovak movie posters sometime in early seventies. We still don’t know much about his work, but surely love his portfolio and will look forward further exploration. Movie poster looks astonishing, thank you!!

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Please discover other fascinating movie posters designed by Miroslav Pechánek in our online archive.

Thanks to Rachel and Andrew,

for sending us their snapshots of wonderfully framed film poster by Alexej Jaroš and Karel Teissig. Posters were treated with beautiful combination of lively gold & silver. And what’s more Mr. Framer took a missing corner on the Donkey Skin as a challenge and granted the poster with little / large (in spirits) repair. See his fantastic work bellow.

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Donkey Skin poster before and after the magical touch of Master Framer.

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Thank you for giving them all that love, we are happy we could see them!

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Note: Original posters can be seen by clicking on the images.

Thanks very much to Britta,

for taking care of Robinson Crusoe poster designed in 1974 by Richtář and for sending us her snapshots. Framing par excellence, it looks absolutely beautiful. White was a great choice and mounting is a joy to look at. Could there be a better place for Robinson Crusoes than Mallorca island? Bellow is the answer:

Original poster can be seen by clicking on any of the images. Or you can explore other fascinating poster designs made for the films based on Daniel Defoe‘s writings.

Thanks to Scarlett,

for sending us her snapshot of The French Lieutenant’s Woman / Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons movie poster. We are happy seeing Zdeněk Vlach‘s excellent art work (1987)  is about to adorn the wall. Impressive illustrator and award winning poster artist designed over 200 movie posters.

Artist’s portfolio: Zdeněk Vlach