APOLOGIZE TO THE PURIST among Brazilian history scholars and to manuscript collectors, but Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter in 1500 was the first advertising poster to depict our homeland. Don Manuel, king of Portugal at the time, never published the letter perhaps to ward off the greed of other nations...

Luckily the twentieth century international travel businesmen did not share his views and called on a number of designers to produce some unforgettable, brightly-colorede, striking images. In a straight-forward language or in dreamlike settings of breathless wonder, they conveyed the idea that coming to Rio-de-Janeiro was like living out a fairy tale...

Though they cannot be considered a contemporary novelty (the first newspapers published in France back in 1631 already displayed advertisement), billboards did not develop fully until the late nineteenth century. Employing lithography and off-set techniques, they were so sophisticated that often six or seven colors were used.

"Ridding the streets of the gray and dark monotony of buildings aligned as if by a ruler: splashing them with colorful fireworks, spreading joy; turning walls into adornable surfaces, and extracting from this outdoor museum the true nature of a people while at the same time educating the taste of the collective unconscious." This was Roger Marx"s introduction to the exhibit of one of the earliest geniuses of billboard art, Jules Chéret, in 1889.




Both during the art nouveau (1880-1914) and art déco (1920-1950) eras bustled with finely crafted samples of this art, and the posters of those days are the most sought-after by museums and collectors alike. Testimonials of a country"s artistic and economic history, they went from just mere advertising media to become aesthetic and profitable printed treasures. The nostalgia they evoke, aside from their decorative appeal, stimulates the booming collectionism we see today. In nearly thirty years of pursuit, with Paris as a starting pont (where more museums, art dealers and experts devoted to the subject are found than anywhere else in the world), I have just recently managed to gather ten samples...

Vistas are never the same in any two posters about Rio-de-Janeiro. There is a clear concern with capturing the nuances of sunlight at a unique point in time. Often a wild sunrise lights up the entire poster. Dreamlike images. These are pre-globalization moments, though.The written language is not always the same spoken by the cruise ship or airline owners. There are several several examples of this. KLM (Dutch) using French; PanAM (American) writing in German anout the wonder city...





It is intriguing to find that the name of the city (Rio-de-Janeiro) is absent in most of the surviving posters. As if everybody knew that those beaches, those mountains, that bay are Rio-de-Janeiro . We simply read South America. Designers apparently assumed that the vistas were so well known that it would be enough to mention the continent. The loveliest city in the world, as foreign magazines and newspapers described it, became an icon for the whole continent.

One of the most remarkable affiches, the 1946 "Air France" poster designed by Victor Vasarely - the founding father of Op-Art - shows a far-off and vague landscape. All that stands out are silhouetes of Sugar Loaf and Corcovado. A huge rising sun reflecting on the Atlantic Ocean waters, where waves and shadows interwine top duplicate the black-and-white design of the famous Copacabana sidewalks takes up most of the poster area. This "road toward the sun",hopes of a new beginning, is the message conveyed by many of the best known posters made to draw both tourists and immigrants weary of the wars of the Old World.




Going back to Pero Vaz de Caminha"s letter to His Majesty; we are surprised by the statement that the art of prints, of drawings, of engravings, of posters - in short, anything on paper cannot survive because the medium will not last. These advertising posters, some nearly a century old, prove otherwise. After all, what medium was used to write the very first inventory of the Brazilian wealth five hundred years ago?

Rio-de-Janeiro is definately the Famous Places in Brazil to visit ! Don´t miss this chance!

Rio Vintage Posters