Description:
Poster advertising the autobiographical novel of Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele. The small-size poster is a good example of the constructivist graphic design of the 1920s-30s. The composition is purely typographical where the harmony is created by the fonts in altering sizes and types on the colourful background.
Axel Munthe (1857-1949) was a Swedish doctor and physicist, who was a successful practitioner in Paris, Rome and London. Eventually he fulfilled his childhood fantasy: to build a villa on a place of an old chapel on the Capri Island. The villa was frequented by celebrities of the age (Jean-Martin Charcot, Louis Pasteur, Henry James, the Swedish Queen or Guy de Maupassant). In the fascinating novel of Munthe we can enjoy the tales of these characters as well as the stories of common people, people from Naples living in poverty, and also animals are mentioned in the book. The book was first published in 1929, and was a great success and it was translated into several languages. The Hungarian translation was first published in 1934.
