Jean Carlu (

Bonnières-sur-Seine Bonnières-sur-Seine (, literally ''Bonnières on Seine'') is a commune in the Yvelines department in north-central France. See also *Communes of the Yvelines department An intentional community is a voluntary residential community which ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, 1900–1997) was a French

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

who specialised in posters. He was a member of a family of architects; his brother

Jacques Carlu Jacques Carlu (7 April 1890 Bonnières-sur-Seine – 3 December 1976 Paris) was a French architect and designer, working mostly in Art Deco style, active in France, Canada, and in the United States. Biography Through the 1910s Carlu studied on ...

for example designed the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. He made posters during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

to promote an increase in American production.

Biography

Jean Carlu started his career as a professional poster-designer in 1919, after a competition by a producer of dental aids ( Glycodont) in 1918. From 1919 until 1921 he served as an illustrator, after which he worked at an agency that designed advertisements. In that period he designed his first poster in

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style (for ''

The Kid The Kid or The Kids may refer to: Fictional characters * The kid (''Blood Meridian''), a character in Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel ''Blood Meridian'' * The Kid (''The Matrix''), a character in the ''Matrix'' film series * The Kid (''The Stand'' ...

'' by

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...

). He was attracted by

cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

and by the works of

Juan Gris José Victoriano González-Pérez (23 March 1887 – 11 May 1927), better known as Juan Gris (; ), was a Spanish painter born in Madrid who lived and worked in France for most of his active period. Closely connected to the innovative artistic ge ...

and

Albert Gleizes Albert Gleizes (; 8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953) was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on ...

. He was one of the first who realised that to fix a trademark in the minds of consumers a process needs to be gone through in which schematic forms and expressive colours are applied. These are the characteristics that give his posters and other works their distinguishable quality. The fame of Carlu rests mainly on two posters: for ''Monsavon'' and for the

Théâtre Pigalle The Théâtre Pigalle was a theatre in Paris, located in the rue Pigalle in the ninth ''arrondissement''. History Opened on June 20, 1929, financed by Philippe de Rothschild on the estate of his father Henri de Rothschild, the Rothschilds' amb ...

. He also designed a pioneering label for the 1924 vintage of

Château Mouton-Rothschild A château (; plural: châteaux) is a manor house or residence of the lord of the manor, or a fine country house of nobility or gentry, with or without fortifications, originally, and still most frequently, in French-speaking regions. Nowaday ...

.Label of Château Mouton-Rothschild. This poster can be see
here
Carlu also designed posters for the

Container Corporation of America Container Corporation of America (CCA) was founded in 1926 and manufactured corrugated boxes. In 1968 CCA merged with Montgomery Ward & Company, Inc., becoming MARCOR. MARCOR maintained separate management for the operations of each company, but ...

Pan American Airways Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and commonly known as Pan Am, was an American airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States ...

, and

Air France Air France (; formally ''Société Air France, S.A.''), stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the flag carrier of France headquartered in Tremblay-en-France. It is a subsidiary of the Air France–KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global air ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlu, Jean 1900 births 1997 deaths French poster artists American artists