Will - Lot 59

Will WILL Original poster illustration for Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow by Franz Lehár at the Grand-Théâtre in Verviers in 1989. Signed. India ink, watercolor, gouache, colored pencil and graphite on paper 33.6 × 48.3 cm (13.23 × 19.02 in.) Will rarely worked in advertising. He must have been disgusted by his experience as art director of Journal Tintin, where advertisers made him change his layouts all the time. But he was not averse, from time to time, to designing a poster, which allowed him to express his talents as a colorist, as is the case here. Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár's operetta, typical of the Austrian generation between the wars, is perfectly in Will's wheelhouse: a resplendent, doe-eyed woman in a magnificent blue dress before a bed of swirling creatures, to the three-beat rhythm of the Viennese waltz. The floral subject of the foreground is echoed in the Jugendstil motif of the header and the typography of the title.