Vintage Poster Archives
Fix-Masseau Renault Huiles 1934 | Art Deco Poster
Fix-Masseau Renault Huiles 1934 | Art Deco Poster
Couldn't load pickup availability
A red hand dominates the lower two-thirds of the composition, two fingers raised in a V-shape, the palm carrying the poster's entire message in white inline-shadowed block type: '2 HUILES RENAULT'. Between the extended fingers, framed against a dark night sky scattered with white dots, a streamlined 1930s saloon travels at speed, its headlamps cutting forward. The background graduates from charcoal black at the top through grey to a pale cream at the horizon line. Bottom right, in spaced capitals, the product breakdown: 'FLUIDE POUR MOTEURS' and 'CARTERS H POUR BOITES ET PONTS'.
Designed by Pierre Fix-Masseau for Renault in 1934 and printed by Mobiners Alpha Arvers, Paris, this lithograph belongs to the automotive advertising campaign Fix-Masseau produced in the early years of his practice. He had trained under A.M. Cassandre from 1926 to 1928, and the Cassandre method is visible throughout: reduce the product to a single concentrated symbol, let the typography sit within the image rather than beneath it, and trust the contrast to carry the message across a wall. Fix-Masseau (1905–1994) went on to design for SNCF and the Venice Simplon Orient Express, but his 1930s Renault work represents his closest engagement with Cassandre's object-centred approach.
The poster sits within a defined strand of Art Deco automotive advertising in which the product is abstracted into geometry rather than shown literally. The hand as compositional anchor, the silhouette car as speed signifier, the flat red ground against the graduated grey: these are the tools of the Cassandre circle applied to a lubricant campaign.
This reproduction has been digitally restored from an archival source and is produced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. The high-contrast palette and flat graphic structure hold cleanly at all standard print sizes.
