Artist: Gisbert Combaz Belgian (1869-1941)
Title: La Libre Esthetique
Plate: PM.19
Original lithograph from the "Das Moderne Plakat" series, View entire collection (50)
Printed by Verlag von Gerhard Kuhtmann, Dresden, 1897.
Presented in 16 x 20 in. acid free, archival museum mat, with framing labels. Ready to frame. Shipped boxed flat.
Certificate of Authenticity.
Sheet Size: 9 in x 12 in 23 cm x 30.5 cm
Price: $125.00
Combaz was an Oriental scholar, painter and graphic designer, as well as a lawyer, often indicated by the "Me." (for "Maitre") before his signature.
"Gisbert Combaz is among a handful of turn-of-the century poster artists to create a personal style that is still recognizable today. His posters for the exhibition society La Libre Esthetique and his sets of postcards are as prized now as they were in Combaz's day. As this lavishly illustrated book reveals, however, Combaz was also an accomplished graphic artist, painter, and art critic who made important contributions to Western understanding of the art of the Far East and was an inspiring teacher to several generations of Belgian artists." (amazon.com)
La Libre Esthétique - a term difficult to adapt in English, perhaps best as aesthetical freedom - was an artistic society founded in 1893 in Brussels to continue the efforts of the artists' group Les XX dissolved the same year. To reduce conflicts between artists invited or excluded, artists were no longer admitted to the society, thus all exhibitors were now invited. The first annual exhibition was opened on 14 February 1894, and the exhibition of 1914 was the last: a year later German troops had occupied Belgium, Brussels included.