Vintage Poster Archives
Cabaret Les Naturistes 1948 | Janin Willette Paris
Cabaret Les Naturistes 1948 | Janin Willette Paris
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Two figures burst upward against a field of swirling magenta-purple: a nude female dancer in peach flesh tones, her arms flung wide, her body rendered in bold black leaf-and-flame markings that echo the vocabulary of Art Deco ornament; behind her a white, near-spectral male figure rises in counterpoint. Janin Willette fills the full height of the poster with kinetic movement, anchoring it only at the base with the cream serif title CABARET LES NATURISTES and the address 1 PLACE PIGALLE, PARIS.
Printed by Imprimerie Baraou around 1948, the poster advertised one of Pigalle's most talked-about post-war cabarets, billing sixty artists, dancers, and its celebrated Naturist's Girls performing nightly from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The saturated violet-magenta ground, the high-contrast body markings, and the two-figure composition in counterposed leap place this design in the lineage of Parisian cabaret advertising that stretches from Toulouse-Lautrec through to the mid-century revue. Willette's treatment is notably assured: the foreground figure is fully realised and corporeal, the background figure dissolved into white, a device that creates depth and a sense of theatrical apparition without any recourse to photographic convention.
Reproduced from an archival source on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based inks. A natural fit for anyone drawn to mid-century French graphic design or the visual culture of post-war Parisian cabaret.
