Art for Art House: The Posters of Peter Strausfeld - Paperback

by Tim Medland (Author), Angelina Lippert (Author), Michael Lellouche (Contribution by)

Between 1947 and 1980, Peter Strausfeld, a German refugee interned on the Isle of Man during World War II, created unique, compelling posters for London's Academy Cinema--the city's premier art house movie theater. Founded by Elsie Cohen in 1931, the Academy specialized in international films that eschewed classic Hollywood narratives, highlighting works by now-famous directors like Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, and Satyajit Ray. While these films now hold cult status for cinema aficionados, in the early to mid-twentieth century, art house remained a novel and daring form of cinema that few theaters showcased.

Throughout his longstanding relationship with the Academy and its director George Hoellering, Strausfeld created over 300 bold, predominantly single-color linocut compositions with a deceptively simple hand-printed feel. Printed in editions of 100 to 300 copies, they populated London's subway system and represented not just the niche market for the cinema but also that which was occupied by the films themselves. This book accompanies and expands upon an exhibition of the same name at Poster House in New York City. It is the first publication in English dedicated to Strausfeld, highlighting his unique approach to localized cinema advertising and his contribution to broader movie history.

Author Biography

Michael Lellouche is a French author, screenwriter, and former film and jazz journalist. A specialist in the history of the poster, he holds a collection of several thousand militant posters. He is the author of Protest! Changing the World with Posters 1968-1973 and contributes articles and essays on the subject, including to the magazine Alternatives Économiques. In 2018, Lellouche curated the exhibition Get Up, Stand Up at the MIMA museum in Brussels. He has also presented lectures on the history of the poster, notably at the Institut National du Patrimoine and the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), and he teaches cinema classes in high school.

Tim Medland is an independent curator who focuses on the history of visual and material culture. He holds an MA in museum studies from the University of Leicester, with a concentration in socially engaged practice. His research interests include environmental activism and sustainability and the histories of transport, propaganda, colonialism, and migration. He serves on the board of the Norwich Printing Museum in Norfolk, England.

Angelina Lippert is the executive director and curator of Poster House in New York City, the first museum in the United States dedicated to the art and history of the poster. She holds an MA in the art of the Russian avant-garde from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and a BA in theology and art history from Smith College. She is the author of The Art Deco Poster and the coauthor of Wonder City of the World: New York City Travel Posters, and she has contributed essays to Poster Cult on the letterpress designer Dafi Kühne, Steve Heller's The Education of a Design Writer, and 150 Stories by the Art Students League. She was a recipient of the Emily Hall Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators through Hyperallergic. She is a former critic on art, design, and fashion for the New York Journal of Books.

Laurent Durieux is a Belgian illustrator and graphic designer, renowned for his richly detailed posters, which are often personal reinterpretations of classic films. He has collaborated with prestigious movie studios and designed hundreds of posters, with his limited-edition screen prints highly sought after by collectors worldwide. His work has been showcased internationally in several exhibitions across France, Belgium, and the United States. In 2020, a major retrospective of his work was published under the title Mirages: The Art of Laurent Durieux, and filmmaker Laurent Frapat dedicated a documentary to him, Out of the Box.