The two most important posters made by Raymond Savignac,
on sale at L'IMAGE

RAYMOND SAVIGNAC, today aged 93, published his first poster in 1933. Before his achieving recognition as a master of graphic arts in 1949 with his MONSAVON poster, he had been a pupil of the graphic designer Cassandre.
This creation of his designed in 1948, disapproved by L’Oreal, forgotten in a drawer, found by chance and finally printed, won immediately great acclaim and marked Savignac’s true start as a poster designer. Just for this reason, he states in his memoires that he was born from the udders of his Monsavon cow. With his Monsavon cow he found a new way for the French poster: the visual gag, the taste for the essential with winks and great uniformity of colours. His graphic jests will be innumerable.
It is in his atelier on the hills of Trouville, in front of the seaside that he carries on his production as a poster designer, a production that, as he himself describes , aims at “creating transient images that will not be forgotten”.

Raymond Savignac has designed more than 600 posters and many of them have been all over the world.
His brush-stroke, always very neat, is immediately recognizable in “Get” or “Maurice Baquet”, “Citroën” or “Prevoir” advertising posters, but also in those created for the cinema, like “La guerre des boutons” by Yves Robert or ”Lancelot du Lac” by Robert Bresson.
He worked also for foreign trademarks: Parisiennes in Switzerland in 1951; Opal in Germany in 1954; Il Giorno in Italy in 1956; Morinaga Chocolat in Japan in 1958; The Times in Great Britain in 1958 and also Salveplast in Sweden in 1954.
Accordino to Savignac “the poster” belongs to the category of the street arts.
“In my veins flows street blood” explains this son of Parisian hosts. “From the graphic point of view I’ve educated myself there, where I’ve spent most of my life observing”.

This is the 11th exhibition that the Bibliothèque Forney (1, rue du Figuier - 75004 Paris - Tel. +33. 1.42.78.14.60) dedicates to a poster designer.
Since 1991 have been exhibited: André Wilquin, Raymond Gid, J. Jacquelin Derouet, Jean Mercier, Raymond Brenot, Hervé Morvan, Eugène Ogé, Jacques Nathan Garamond, Jean Colin.
On the occasion, a catalogne raisonné with the artist’s entire production has been printed, authors Anne-Claude Lelieur and Raymond Bachollet, 556 pages, 850 colour pictures, size 17 x 24 cm., price 44 Euro (Editions Paris-Bibliothèques, 6, rue François-Miron, 75004 Paris).