Details
The image
A racing car forced into the foreground, its body reduced to a few pale shapes and its wheels smeared into ellipses, with the city behind held flat like a stage backdrop. The road is a set of straight lines and the sky is one colour, so the machine is the only thing on the sheet that appears to have volume.
Where it comes from
Grand prix posters of the late 1920s and 1930s were drawn by illustrators who understood that a car is mostly movement. They exaggerated the speed rather than describing the machine, because the audience was standing at the edge of a street circuit and already knew what a car looked like. Strong complementary colour, a low viewpoint and a deliberately flat background did the work that photography could not yet do at speed.
On the wall
It brings movement and heat into a room, so it suits a study, a workshop, a hallway or a room with industrial furniture. Because the composition is dense and the colour is loud, it needs a plain surface around it. In a group it should be the piece that sets the energy.
In company
The rest of the Vintage collection holds pieces from the same years and the same printing habits.Avoid hanging it beside a second large racing sheet, where the two would compete rather than build a sequence.
