Peugeot
Artist
Milton Glaser
United States, 1929 - 2020
Datec. 1970
MediumOffset Lithograph
Dimensions31 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (80 x 59.7 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.5879
DescriptionDuring the 1970s, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast of Push Pin Studios in New York were hired by the French company Peugeot, the oldest car manufacturer in the world, to design posters promoting its famous racing bikes. The firm had made its first bicycle in 1882 and gradually introduced racing bikes, sponsoring its first Tour de France winner in 1905. Here, Glaser promotes a Peugeot racing bike on a course through the Route Napoleon, a scenic road through the French Alps that follows the path taken by Napoleon during his 1815 escape from the island of Elba to Grenoble. (Fortunately, it became a paved tourist route in 1932.) His design is characteristic of the boldly colorful and irreverent style pioneered by Pushpin after its founding in 1954 in defiance of conventional advertising standards; Napoleon, riding a new Peugeot racing bike, hand hidden in his coat in his famous pose, is represented in a fluidly three-dimensional and humorous version of the style of the French poster designs of the Belle Epoque. On View
Not on view
