Winter sports original vintage posters, part 1/2

Winter sports and posters,
what impact do winter sports have had on the universe of advertising and tourism posters?

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The first posters announcing the new pleasures of winter arrived at the very end of the 19th century. These costly works were born at a time when the economic and financial stakes were high enough to justify their production, as they were indeed very expensive to produce. It is then easy to measure the importance that winter is gaining in tourism: it corresponds to the space devoted to it on the posters.

Originally and in general, tourism posters are above all elements of presentation of railway schedules, but with the development of leisure travel, they become more and more decorative: the tourism industry sees the emergence of new forms of leisure and the poster must not only inform but also seduce.
The train station halls are historically the first poster museums: they present every day on paper the panoramas in vogue to the eyes of travelers. Before 1900, winter sports posters were very rare and covered both the summer and winter seasons, as the resorts could not afford to produce different posters.

The schedule and the map of the region are soon relegated to the bottom of the poster, before disappearing altogether. To save money, the artists initially proposed "patchwork" works: on a single poster, two, three, four and even twenty sites or panoramas were represented in the form of mosaics of vignettes (of good and sometimes less good taste). Very quickly, the posters show skating scenes and white peaks in the middle of the usual summer landscapes. Among all the more or less exotic landscapes that travelers of the P.L.M. can admire, the Alps are now part of the most familiar representations. One can visit the luxurious and fashionable resorts on the walls and admire their majestic hotels.
In 1890, winter sports took up one-sixth of the space of a poster promoting stays in Davos, compared to more than half only a few years later. The same was true in France with Font-Romeu, which soon had its own posters for the winter season.

Moreover, before being almost all dethroned by the representations of alpine skiing, winter activities were particularly varied at the beginning of the 20th century. On the same economic model, most of these leisure activities are represented at the same time on a single poster, expanding the range of entertainment offered to tourists, this time gathered around a single season, winter.

The more fashionable the winter sports-related activities, the more numerous the posters. Designed to be seen and admired, they participate in the absolute change of perception of winter (mentioned in the first part of our articles dedicated to winter sports), and occupy the central places of the walls of cities, train stations, travel agencies, tourist offices... Their development accompanies the tremendous craze around these new winter activities that is gaining a society in full evolution.




Printed in some five thousand copies, the posters of the P.L.M. company have for example a life span of approximately three years, a relatively short period for the time in view of the cost of manufacture of these last ones previously evoked. The taste of the day evolves quickly and the artists must then unceasingly put themselves at the page, as well as reinventing new forms of presentations always more audacious. The winter sports posters inevitably represent mountainous and snowy landscapes, and these become the favorite subject of the poster masters. The weather is always beautiful on these ideal landscapes offered to the dream of travelers.


It is first the painters, following the example of Hugo d'Alési, who open this new genre and give it its first letters of nobility. Then to the tireless representations of picturesque and peaceful landscapes, graphic fantasies and the appearance of a new dimension, that of the movement. Indeed, the image becomes animated and the tourists are now actors: they appear in the foreground of the compositions, thus making the mountain alive. From the end of the 19th century, the skier appeared on posters, presenting an idealized vision of this new sport, which was very technical.




Between modernity and tradition, contemplation and action, or between figurative realism and humor, the world's graphic production is astonishing. It is difficult to distinguish real trends in the artistic creation related to winter sports (apart from those stemming from the great historical artistic currents), but it is possible to identify several major recurring themes. This production is indeed very diverse, even within the same country or region.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the meeting of winter sports and posters was marked by the delicate Art Nouveau movement, reflecting the luxury they embodied. Delayed by the First World War, winter tourism will then experience a new boom between 1920 and 1930, and these years represent the golden age of the tourist poster, of which the winter sports posters represent a very important part. Also, the years between the two world wars accompanied the emergence of Art Deco, a characteristic style marked by a rigorous geometric order, a simplification of forms, or a predominance of angles and straight lines. The spirit of great elegance that is attributed to this style is also perfectly suited to the world of winter sports.

At this time, although already present from the beginning of winter sports posters, female figures appear in a new light! The birth of winter sports coincided with the emergence of feminism. Without worrying about conventions, poster artists admitted that women were free to engage in winter sports and did not hesitate to represent them. The artists integrate women in winter activities, taking them out of the roles in which they are usually reduced in the Parisian posters ... Skiing is also a great opportunity for women to assert their freedom and their will through sport. They are also seductive, intended for male customers. The charming skiers become ambassadors of good taste and encourage both male and female customers to join the resorts, as is the case for example on the memorable posters of Martin Peikert.

Peikert's works are also marked by a touch of humor that can be found in different forms in those of many other artists. This one responds to one of the great themes associated with winter sports, the joy of living. Sunbathing, fresh air, health are obviously part of the picture, and the compositions are populated with new figures bringing gaiety and lightness: the children. Practicing sledding and snowball fights, they bring a charming touch of innocence and winter sports holidays begin to be associated with family vacations. Almost excluded from the posters until then, which had been intended more for couples, children made their appearance in the 1930s. A few decades later, in the 1950's and echoing the children's universe, animals made their entrance on the scene, as can be seen in the work of Herb Leupin or Martin Peikert.

In another genre, Samivel was one of the great figures of winter sports posters in France in the 1950s. His works are marked by a unique sense of magic and a call to contemplation both carried by soft colors. This type of production conveys values of simplicity, effort and respect for nature to which sportsmen and women who prefer a peaceful approach to the mountains are sensitive.

Other poster artists, on the other hand, favored the approach of action, speed and technique and thus proposed compositions with strong structures. They have to illustrate perfectly the practice of the sport as well as faithfully reproduce the specificities of the landscape.

The mountains are becoming a dominant feature of tourist destinations and therefore of advertising media. The new attractive facilities that resulted from these practices also offered new subjects to poster artists: cogwheel trains and funiculars had to appear on resort advertisements. Winter sports became such a phenomenon that in order to make themselves known, the resorts, both historic and more recent, not only carried out numerous and costly development works, but also launched large-scale advertising campaigns, the scene of the evolution of a new genre and of a strong graphic modernity that would last throughout the 20th century.

The posters of the pioneering era of winter sports constitute a precise archive of the history of skiing and its progress. From the 1900s onwards, tourism was totally transformed: the summer mountains were no longer the only ones to enjoy the honors of tourists, and consequently, of the poster. The latter, by definition, follows tastes and fashions very closely. Putting at its service all the resources of art and commerce, it is a fascinating social revealer, a unique witness of economic, tourist and cultural stakes. The art of the poster also obeys its own codes, its own history, and the compositions linked to winter sports form a unique whole, retracing a sporting and human epic of worldwide scope.