Budapest Poster Gallery

2nd auction | posters and poster designs

40 x 20 cm. Near mint.

Poster of the Sternberg Budapest instrument factory. The text of the poster is in Hungarian and German. It says 'Illustrated price-list for free'. A new address was overprinted on the original design. Ármin Sternberg and his brother founded their instrument factory in 1881, which became one of the most prominent factories of the kind in the interwar period. Besides instruments, they manufactured radios, gramophones and vinyl records. The company was a leading propagator of jazz music, distributed songbooks among local bands, and their paper, the Sternberg News had the same purpose. This was the first Hungarian jazz magazine. The company was nationalized after 1945.
This composition had been used for poster, advertisement and slip probably for more decades. The decorative covering of the street name, that is, the old name of the street is hidden under a pattern, also suggests that. Kerepesi street was renamed in 1906, when the ashes of Francis II Rákóczi, who died in the Ottoman Empire, were taken home, and were transported on this road from Keleti Railway Station to the Basilica. That's why the ornamented overprint hides the old name 'Kerepesi út' while the new address sends customers to Rákóczi street 60. It means that the poster was printed before 1906, and the overprint indicates that it had been in use for a long time.
The composition is archaic and decorative: the figures are playing music and are wearing Hungarian style clothing. They resemble the characters of the 19th century folk genre painting.
(Anikó Katona)