Date: 1982
Size: 23 x 31.5 inches
Artist: Marcel Jacno
About the Poster: The famous Gauloises cigarette packaging was designed by French graphic designer Marcel Jacno, who also created the typography of the newspaper France-Soir. His career began in the late 1920s when he made movie posters for Gaumont and Paramount. He continued to design the advertisements, packaging, boxes, and bottles for chocolate company Révillon, Gurelain, Chanel, Bourgeois, Cinzano, and Courvoiser and rebranded Éditions Julliard and Denoël.
Gauloises or "Gaul women" in French ("cigarette" is feminine in French), is a brand of cigarettes of French manufacture. Between the World Wars the smoking of Gauloises in France was considered patriotic as the brand was associated with the cigarette-smoking poilu (a slang term for the French infantryman in the trenches) and the resistance fighters during the Vichy Regime. The brand was also linked to high-status and inspirational figures representing the worlds of art (e.g. Pablo Picasso) and the intellectual elite (e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Jean Baudrillard) in popular music, for example French pianist and composer Maurice Ravel and American singer Jim Morrison.
Poster is unlined and in excellent condition. From a private collection.