Pico - Poster Project

Maurice PICAUD, dit PICO (1900 - 1977)
Randall, Study for a music-hall poster
Pencil, Indian ink and gouache
39 x 28.5 cm
Signed on the right

Architect, decorator, painter and illustrator, Maurice Picaud is known for two icons of Art Deco: the facade of the Folies Bergère, adorned with a large golden bas-relief for which the dancer Lila Nikolska posed, and the poster for La Grande Folie, also intended for the theater on rue Richet whose Picaud also decorated the bar. Trained at the Boulle school, Maurice Picaud worked for Rulhmann. He delivered illustrations to many magazines and decorated the town hall of Montdidier in the Somme. Harry Randall (1857 - 1932) was a famous and popular English comic actor, specializing in music hall and pantomime. Our poster project turns out to be very close, in its style and chromaticism, to the poster that Pico designed for the Folies Bergère. The date of his death offers a terminus ante quem indicating that our drawing could not have been made beyond 1932 - which corresponds to his typical Art Deco graphics.