An outstanding assortment of more than 430 Vintage Posters will go for auction on Thursday, February 2nd at the Swann Galleries. This sale, the first of Swann’s 2012 season, features some exceptional rarities, as well as iconic images from the United States and Europe. The public exhibition of the posters started this past Saturday, and will continue until Wednesday, February 1st, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Art Nouveau collectors will be pleased to know that approximately 100 rare and important posters of that style will be featured in the sale.

Of note is a stunning set of Alphonse Mucha’s The Seasons, two variations of Mucha’s celebrated Reverie, one 1897, the other circa 1898. A run of posters of Judaic and Hebraic interest includes Miskovitz’s rare advertisement for the film The Promised Land, billed as “the first movie filmed in Palestine,” with text in Hungarian and Romanian, circa 1930s. Steven Spielberg adapted this image for a poster promoting his Jewish Film Archive. There are also posters for the Jewish National Fund, the Palestine & Near East Exhibition, the inauguration of an international memorial monument at Birkenau, and more. Also on view is a number of ski and winter resort posters from around the world. American examples include Ernest Haskell’s 1896 image for Truth Magazine, which is the first American ski poster, and possibly the earliest ski poster from anywhere; 17 posters for the annual Dartmouth Winter Carnival, including some of the most striking and rare images from the late 1930s. Lou Hechenberger’s bright and colorful image of a female skier toting her skis in New Hampshire. Last but not least are my personal favorites, three exceptional posters from Bernard Vellemot for Perrier’s campaign ads which ran in the 1970s and 1980s. The Swann Galleries is located at 104 East 25th Street, NYC.