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Valais | Suisse

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Creator Eric Hermès
Printing year 1933
Sheet size (cm) 99.5×61.5
Printing technique Lithograph
Printer Säuberlin & Pfeiffer
Condition A
Asking price 4'400 CHF
Categories Animal, Romandy, Switzerland

This was the first poster ever to advertise the Valais as such – although from today’s perspective it may come as something of a surprise that it was aimed at summer visitors rather than winter sports enthusiasts. However, the infrastructure in the interwar Valais was by no means as developed as in the Grisons Alps, for example, so it made sense not to seek competition here (yet).
Printed in several languages, the poster was commissioned by the Association hôtelière du Valais under the impact of the world economic crisis – one of the nuclei of the Union valaisanne du tourisme founded in 1937, which was henceforth concerned with the cantonal promotion of tourism, for which Eric Hermès then also created posters. Here he opted for an very idyllic scene, to which he lent an emphatically local touch with the farmer’s wife in traditional costume on her donkey (or is it a mule…?).

Hermès (1881-1971), born in Ludwigshafen and naturalized in Geneva in 1902, did not begin to work on posters until 1929 – but did so successfully that he was soon engaged also by the Swiss Tourist office.

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Valais – Switzerland