Odeon Casino by Walter Schnackenberg, German cabaret lithograph, 1920

An exquisitely-dressed woman mixes her cocktail, immersed in the nightlife of Walter Schnakenberg’s poster promoting the decadent Odeon Casino in Munich. “If the Odeon Casino and the Bonbonnière & Eremitage were anything like their posters promised, we can barely imagine the debauchery Evenings there would contain.” The costume and poster designs of Walter Schnakenberg defined ballet and cabaret during Germany’s Weimar Republic. “The modern poster as we know it–large, colorful images printed in quantities on paper–is a relatively modern invention, coming to a recognizable form just before the close of the 19th century. While Paris was unquestionably the center of the world when it came to Poster Art at the opening of the movement, by 1910 Germany had established itself as a landmark for groundbreaking graphic artists. With advances in lithography, German printers were creating some of the most powerful ink-on-paper works in Europe; the simple elegance of the German aesthetic combined with sophisticated printing techniques make the lithographed art posters of this era more kin to oil paintings than contemporary posters.” -Quotes from Transcendent Luxury by Thomas Negovan (2016) Paper measures approximately 8 7/16 x 11 inches. This lithograph was published in 1920 by O. Consée in Munich. Notable museum collections and institutions featuring works by Walter Schnackenberg include: Victoria and Albert Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library