Vintage Poster Archives
Napierkowska 1910s | Orsi French Theatre Poster
Napierkowska 1910s | Orsi French Theatre Poster
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A dancer arches against a field of deep cobalt blue, her pale yellow-green torso curving upward, one arm raised in a diagonal line toward the upper-left. She wears a salmon pink bodice, green drop earrings, and navy tights patterned with large pale blue ovals. Her orange heels anchor the composition at the lower edge. Across the cream border, the subject's name runs in heavy condensed navy capitals: NAPIERKOWSKA. The artist credit, Orsi, appears in small italic at upper-right, alongside the French theatrical visa number 13797.
Stacia Napierkowska (1891–1945) was a dancer and actress of Polish parentage, born in Paris, who built her career at the Folies Bergère and the Opéra-Comique before moving into silent cinema. Between 1908 and 1926 she appeared in 86 films. Her 1913 tour of the United States ended in arrest in New York, where one of her dance performances was ruled indecent, an episode that made her a figure of considerable international notoriety. The poster's designer, known only as Orsi, was a French theatre lithographer responsible for a large body of Parisian performer posters during the same period. His identity has not been established definitively by poster scholarship, though his output is documented across the French theatrical poster canon.
Reproduced from an archival source as a fine art print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper with pigment-based inks. The natural white, brightener-free ground of the paper sits close to the cream of the original lithographic stock.
A considered fit for anyone with an interest in French performance culture of the pre-war decades, in the flat graphic language of the transitional moment between Art Nouveau and mature Art Deco, or in the visual world of the early silent cinema.
