Travel Poster Swiss Railways Switzerland Invites You Alois Carigiet

Original vintage travel advertising poster published by the Swiss Federal Railways - Switzerland invites you - featuring a colourful design by Swiss graphic designer and painter Alois Carigiet (1902-1985) depicting a yellow straw hat decorated with flowers. Printed in Switzerland by Wolfsberg. Alois Carigiet (30 August 1902 – 1 August 1985) was a Swiss graphic designer, painter, and illustrator. He may be known best for six children's picture books set in the Alps, A Bell for Ursli and its sequels, written by Selina Chönz, and three that he wrote himself. In 1966 he received the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Medal for children's illustrators. After having completed his apprenticeship, Carigiet sought work in Zurich and started a job as a practical trainee with Max Dalang's advertisement agency in 1923, where he soon learned the techniques of graphic design and was hired as a regular employee. After having won several competitions and having gained a reputation, Carigiet opened his own graphic atelier in Zurich in 1927, employing up to six people at times, due to the constantly large volume of orders his business received. Carigiet created numerous commercial and political advertisement posters, festive decorations, educational posters and murals for schools, illustrations and satirical caricatures for the print media, as well as magazine covers for periodicals such as Schweizer Spiegel and SBB-Revue.[6] Important work in the 1930s included a diorama for the Swiss Pavilion at the Paris International world fair in 1937, and set designs, murals and the official posters for the "Landi", the Swiss national exposition held in Zurich in 1939. Though he had never studied visual arts in the academic sense, Carigiet's early graphic design was already strongly influenced by contemporary artists, such as El Lissitzky, whose use of photomontage in a poster announcing the exhibition of Russian avant-garde artists in Zurich, in 1928, inspired the design of a political campaign poster for Zurich's mayor Emil Klöti. In the early 1930s Carigiet traveled to Paris, Munich, Vienna, and Salzburg where he became acquainted with the art movement Neue Sachlichkeit, as reflected in painted scenes of Paris in Das rote Haus am Montmartre (watercolor) and of Ascona in Haus und Garten in Ascona (oil painting on cardboard), both created in 1935. Contemporary expressionism had an influence on his work as well, including his commercial artwork. For example, the display of red horses and a green cow on posters for the OLMA, Switzerland’s annual national agricultural fair, in 1946 and 1952 received acclaim from art critics and questions from more conservative farmers, to which he succinctly replied that the cow was green because it had eaten grass. Carigiet's paintings increasingly depicted everyday motifs from his home canton Graubünden and occasionally Zurich, but also from further trips to France, Spain, and Lapland in the mid-1930s. Carigiet always held a keen interest in the theatre, and had already worked in costume design in the late 1920s. With the help of art critic Jakob Rudolf Welti, he was commissioned as costume and stage designer for the Stadttheater Zürich performance of La belle Hélène in an adaptation by Max Werner Lenz, and created design work for three other programs at the Stadttheater as well. Carigiet was one of the founding members of the influential Cabaret Cornichon, a satirical cabaret program staged in the restaurant "zum Hirschen" in Zurich which would become one of the most significant political cabarets of German-speaking Switzerland during Germany's Nazi regime. Carigiet designed the Cabaret's logo, a grinning cornichon (gherkin) with a carrot-nose, and from 1935 to 1946 he created often parodistic costume and set designs for ten of the Cornichon’s programs, including a heavily decorated barrel organ used by his brother Zarli who was also a member of the Cabaret's ensemble.Year of printing: 1937, country of printing: Switzerland, designer: Alois Carigiet, dimensions (cm): 102x64. Fair condition, repaired tears in margins, creases and cracks.