Poster - La Maison moderne poster - Public domain lithograph

Prior to the introduction of lithography, primary poster printing techniques included the Wood Block technique and the Intaglio technique. Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Germany in 1796, but not utilized until the mid-to-late 1800s until the introduction of “Cheret’s three stone lithographic process.” Three stones were used to create vibrant posters with intense color and texture. The stones used were typically red, yellow or blue, which enabled the artist to produce a poster featuring both graphics and text using any color of the rainbow. The main challenge was to keep the images aligned. This method lent itself to images consisting of large areas of flat color and resulted in the characteristic poster designs of this period. The first “Art Nouveau” poster was made by Chezch artist Alphonse Mucha who worked in Paris. Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque dominated Paris until about 1901. In 1898, a new artist took Paris by storm, who would later be donned the father of modern advertising – Leonetto Cappiello.

Emmanuel Orazi, also known as Manuel Orazi, was born in Rome in 1860. He moved to Paris in 1892, where he worked as a graphic artist in the media and advertising. He collaborated with the Maison de l'Art Nouveau gallery in the field of jewellery design, illustrated "Aphrodite" by Pierre Louis, the French epic "Huon of Bordeaux", stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and "Flowers of Evil" by Charles Baudelaire. In 1895, together with Austen de Crozet, he created the occult "Magic Calendar" ("Calendrier Magique"), published in an edition of 777 copies based on lithographs. The authors of the Calendar parodied the Christian calendars of the time by using alchemical symbols, images of demons, witches, black masses, diagrams, toads, owls and other symbols of evil spirits. Esotericism was popular among intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century, so dark themes were common in literature and art. After the scandalous arrest of Jacques Ferzen, Orazi produced several illustrations for the newspaper L'assiette au berre. In 1921, he designed posters for the Franco-Belgian silent film Atlantis.