Posters of the Zagreb Fair in the Interwar Period (1922–1940) – a Contribution to the History of Croatian Graphic Design

U radu se na osnovi arhivske i periodične građe razmatra uloga Zagrebačkog zbora u promoviranju grafičkog dizajna i reklame, donosi tipologija zborskih plakata i interpretira doprinos autorskih osobnosti koje dosad nisu bile identificirane u povijesti hrvatskoga grafičkog dizajna. Korpus poznatih plakata nadopunjuje se dosad neobjavljenim rješenjima koja se promatraju kao reprezentativni primjeri vizualne kulture svoga vremena.The Zagreb Fair (Zagrebački zbor) had a prominent role in the history of visual communications in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes / Yugoslavia in the period between the two World Wars, both on practical and theoretical level. Between 1922 and 1940 the Fair commissioned over sixty posters for its spring and autumn fairs and accompanying exhibitions, which varied from traditional, illustrative and narrative to those based on patterns characteristic of commercial events throughout Europe, or posters designed by artists who reinterpreted avant-garde language, aesthetics of Art Deco or Classicist paradigm. The process of poster commission changed over the years, and the Fair gave significant attention to visual presentation of events both in the country and abroad, assigning the decisions related to various segments of its marketing activity to the Executive Board. Posters for the Fair were designed by distinguished graphic designers of the period (S. Glumac, O. Antonini, E. Vičić, members of the Atelier Tri and others), but also students of the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts and today forgotten graphic artists such as Kornel Becić, Marcel Fišer, Malvine Egersdorfer and Zvonimir Lenard. Becić was the author of attractive and effective designs comparable to popular iconography and Disney aesthetics, Fišer introduced features of other media (film and photography) to graphic design, while Egersdorfer and Lenard embodied Art Deco fascination with speed and movement in their respective ways. On the basis of archival records and press reports the article discusses the role of the Zagreb Fair in the promotion of graphic design and advertising, introduces a typology of the Fair’s posters and interprets the contribution of artistic personalities heretofore unidentified in the history of Croatian graphic design, increasing the corpus of known posters by unpublished designs analysed as emblematic examples of visual culture of the period