JAROSLAV SURA

Thanks to a copy of Graphis' 1965-66 Annual, I've just discovered the poster art of Jaroslav Sura. The Czech artist who currently resides in Prague joins a long list of the great Czech poster artists, many of which I'd like to post about here soon, but Sura's work is strangely undocumented online or in print (Chronicle Books' biblical Art of the Modern Movie Poster doesn't feature any of his posters in the Czech section, for example). I'm including almost everything I could find online, image-wise, from Sura, but the main two pieces I wanted to share are these two posters found in that Graphis Annual, for productions of Shakespeare's Henry V and Hamlet. Graphis publishes many of these works in black and white, proving their graphic power in greyscale alone, yet leaving us salivating at what these posters would look like in their original color schemes (black, gold and blue/purple for Henry V; black, gold and red for Hamlet). I love Sura's use of abstract shapes and his way with lettering, as if everything in the image were cut or torn from the same material. Please, if you come across any more work by this dude, let me know. Hell, Jaroslav, if you're listening, post more of your stuff online for us to drool over. Stay tuned for a post with some more of my favorite images from the annual.