Jazz Art Posters

For fifty years, Switzerland’s Montreux has hosted a now world-famous jazz festival. Every year in July, international musical greats take to the stages of the city on Lake Geneva and delight an equally international audience. Founded in 1967, the festival has become one of the most important cultural festivals in the world, attracting 250,000 visitors each summer on an international level. In this unmistakable setting, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Prince, David Bowie and even Stevie Wonder have already given legendary concerts that are now anchored in the collective memory. And every year a new jazz poster is published, which was and is created by artists, designers and musicians. Just like the audiovisual archives, the posters are also part of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s heritage. Here, the organizers follow the principle of “Carte Blanche” by leaving the design of the posters to selected artists. To mark the anniversary, the Weserburg is presenting the posters that have appeared to date in their entirety. They are facsimiles made available by the Montreux Jazz Festival. An exhibition in the context of the jazzahead! Festival.

Italian photographer Giuseppe Pino provided the first poster design in 1967, establishing this unique collaboration between Montreux and visual Swiss and international artists. The design of the poster in 1972 was done by photographer Hamish Grimes. Since 1982, the Vaudois graphic artist Pierre Keller has been entrusted with the task of choosing the artists. His first guest, Jean Tinguely, created a veritable fireworks display with his poster and has since made art history. At the same time, he gave the festival its distinctive logo, which today stands for the internationally recognized Montreux brand.

The following artists have realized their very own vision of the Festival through their design: Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Niki De Saint Phalle, François Boisrond, Shigeo Fukuda, Max Bill, Robert Combas, Julian Opie, David Bowie, Phil Collins, Rolf Knie, Zep, and most recently John Armleder, Francis Baudevin, Greg Gorman, Woodkid and Sylvie Fleury. The festival’s logo has not been incorporated into the posters over all these years, as they have been considered full-fledged works of art. On the poster for this year’s edition, the logo is at the heart of the work, like a multicolored synthesis of all the posters created to date, almost as a symbol of 50 years of artistic encounters and the mixing of musical genres.
An exhibition in the framework of jazzahead! 2016 with Switzerland as partner country. In cooperation with the Montreux Jazz Festival.