A hand-stencilled poster by Josef Hoffman for the Weiner Werkstatte will headline Swann Auction Galleries' December 18 sale.
The work was produced for the showroom of the Viennese artists collective circa 1905 and is valued at $250,000-350,000 ahead of the New York auction.
 The poster was produced for the showroom of the Weiner Werkstatte collective in 1905 |
The Weiner Werkstatte, founded in 1903 and in operation until 1932, took its cue from the Arts and Crafts movement - which had been enormously influential in America and the United Kingdom.
The collective operated out of a three storey building in Neustigaffe, Vienna that housed studios and workshops for the production of jewellery, leatherwork, furniture and more.
The different workshops were represented by colours - with red representing metalwork, yellow signifying the paint shop and so on.
The Werkstatte artists produced approximately 40 posters, each featuring the same rectangular logo in the centre.
Just three are known to have survived to the present day, with one in the collection of the Albertina Museum in Vienna and the other currently featuring in an exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum, Houston.
A 1903 poster by Alphonse Mucha for an agricultural, industrial and art fair in the town of Horcice in northeast Bohemia, Czechoslovakia is valued at $15,000-20,000.
The work was produced just three years after Mucha had gained international exposure for his work on the Bosnia and Herzegovina pavilion at the 1900 Universal Exposition of Paris.
Earlier this year his Four Seasons, a series of four lithographs, realised $62,500 at Bonhams New York.
You can view our selection of posters here.
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