About Our Collection
The Cineartista Collection is an exhibition of Mexican cinema lobby card art from the 1920’s to the 1990’s, celebrating the unique style of art, design and marketing that has promoted films south of the border over the last century.
In the US, lobby cards were generally photo stills from the films being promoted, which would be stuck on the walls of theaters as a lure to come see next week’s show. But in Mexico, these mini-posters were works of art unto themselves, often featuring original art from some of South America’s most respected modern artists, while including the still images as insets in the overall design.
The best lobby card artists could paint true-to-life depictions of films taken from black and white stills (or sometimes their imaginations, if stills weren’t available), creating standalone works of art that gave a new spin to the world of cinema. Others, let’s call them the not-so-great lobby card artists, would crank out basic images, sometimes copying the still image top to bottom, and scrawl some letters across the top, desperate to beat a deadline and start the next job.
At Cineartista, we celebrate all of the above – the great, the average, and the awful – in an effort to bring this vibrant niche of the cinema marketing world to a wider audience.
Enjoy our collection, and please feel free to add your own thoughts and memories in the comment section provided.
Thanks!
