''The Golden Butterfly'', 1926 - art by Eric Rohman

by Movie World Posters

Title

''The Golden Butterfly'', 1926 - art by Eric Rohman

Artist

Movie World Posters

Medium

Mixed Media - Vintage Movie Poster

Description

A vintage movie poster of ''The Golden Butterfly'', a 1926 silent film that falls into the drama and romance genres. Directed by Michael Curtiz, this film is notable for several reasons, including its early use of complex narrative structures and its visual style, which was innovative for its time.

The plot revolves around the character of Paganini, a violinist, who becomes enamored with a dancer named Daisy. The story is set against the backdrop of the glamorous and competitive world of show business in the 1920s. The narrative intertwines romance, ambition, and the pursuit of artistic excellence.

One of the film's standout features is its cinematography, which employs various techniques that were quite advanced for the era. These include intricate camera movements and innovative lighting, which help to create a rich, atmospheric setting. The film also makes use of montage sequences to advance its story, a method that was relatively new and experimental at the time.

The performances in "The Golden Butterfly" are also noteworthy, particularly for their expression and ability to convey emotion in a silent film format. The interplay between music and visuals is a key aspect of the film, as it uses Paganini's violin performances as a central narrative and emotional device.

Overall, "The Golden Butterfly" is remembered as a visually striking and emotionally engaging film that showcases early 20th-century cinema's potential for storytelling and artistic expression.

About the artist:

Eric Wilhelm Rohman (May 18, 1891, Nyköping, Sweden— Jan. 6, 1949, Stockholm) was a Swedish illustrator and advertising artist.

The crisp and essential style of Rohman is striking in his movie posters. His traits are well outlined and sharp and give life to the characters; he uses few colors and is never too loud, he has a great originality in managing the composition and the construction of space.

The Swedish artist creates movie posters that are caricatured and powerful in the representation, with high graphic settings. He depicts essential backgrounds of cities, apartment interiors, airplanes, bars, or simple backgrounds with geometric patterns. Rohman's posters attract the audience's attention creating curious scenes, geometric and coherent in the narrative but never static. That never gets boring.

He was raised in Helsingborg, where he discovered a passion for drawing and acting after his undergraduate education. To satisfy his newfound craving, he spent years studying under Swedish painter and illustrator Carl Wilhelmson at the Gothenburg Academy of the Arts. He took side work creating advertising illustrations for newspapers to pay his tuition. He also designed and drew several book covers and books.

Rohman had a brother who managed a large chain of theaters, which needed a constant supply of original art for film posters. Rohman then began working for his brother, which launched his career as a poster designer. In 1921 he was the only person in Sweden who worked full-time creating poster illustrations.

However, to fulfill the theater's demand, he had to work quickly. As a result, he designed four or five posters every week. But he was nonetheless generally still able to bring out the essential details of the film and its actors to express the essence of a film's theme.

Search "Rohman" to see more of his art.

Uploaded

December 25th, 2021

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