Seymour Chwast

Satchmo (Louis Armstrong)

1989

Seymour Chwast's posters are in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide. Seymour Chwast"s art helped to propel a revolution in American illustration during the early 1960"s from sentimental realism to comic expressionism. His work for magazines, posters, advertisements, and children"s books influenced at least two generations of illustrators and designers in America and abroad to explore a broad range of stylistic and conceptual methods, as well as to wed illustration with design. In addition to his unique style and innovative techniques, Chwast contributed a delightfully absurdist sense of wit and humor to twentieth century applied art. Although rooted in the decorative traditions of the nascent years of commercial art—notably Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco—his work is not a synthesis of the past and present, but an invention of the most original kind.