The Hans Sachs Poster Collection will be sold at auctions on 18th, 19th and 20th January at Guernsey's auction house, Bohemian National Hall, 320 East 73rd Street, New York, USA. The catalogue is available to view at http://www.guernseys.com/.
"The fabled Dr. Hans Sachs Poster Collection is universally described as being the most significant collection of its type in existence... In the last years of the nineteenth century, a young German Jewish student, fascinated by the strong graphics applied in promotional posters, began a quest to collect. Thus began what is internationally regarded as the first recognized poster collection the world was yet to see... Among the many categories of posters the young Dr. Sachs sought out covered the worlds of art, propaganda and politics, entertainment (from cabarets and dining to opera and early film), travel, sports, consumer products (from cigarettes to the first automobiles) to scenes of war.
With a keen eye for the very finest creations, Dr. Sachs acquired posters by such noted artists as Mucha, Steinlen, Cassandre, Cheret, Bernhard, Edel, Gipkens, Klinger, Carlu, Schnackenberg, Dufau, Grasset, Fennecker, Hohlwein, Kainer, Pechstein, Scheurich, Biro, Leyendecker, Christy, Flagg and many more. In time, his interest was so great that he organized the first poster collecting society and, in 1911, followed that by publishing Das Plakat (The Poster), an international magazine which quickly developed a devoted following. All the while, his collection grew.
By 1938, under the direction of Josef Goebbels, the Gestapo seized the collection, placing Dr. Sachs in a concentration camp. Although, with the help of family and friends, Dr. Sachs was able to gain his release from the camp, he never saw nor heard of his collection again. Just before the outbreak of World War II, almost penniless, Dr. Sachs escaped Germany and led his family to the United States. In time, he came to believe that his beloved collection was destroyed at the hands of the Nazis.
In 1960, the German government, recognizing the need to provide Dr. Sachs some restitution, offered him a relatively small amount for his loss. Without any other option, he accepted the offer. Dr. Sachs passed away a decade later... In the end, the Sachs family was granted approval to recover Dr. Sachs' collection. Today, the nearly five thousand posters in the collection constitute what knowledgeable experts in the poster world view as the very finest collection of its type. Indeed, many of the posters in the collection are believed to be the sole surviving example of those particular images."
Featured Image: Modern Art - Carl Reiser, 1907
Link: http://www.antikbar.co.uk/product_detail/?pId=1638
