Safety Speed Comfort – Travel posters 1920-1950

On 13 October, on the occasion of Design Meile, the design gallery ZEITLOS – BERLIN opens an exhibition of approx. 40 exquisite travel posters from the 1920s to 1950s from the two private collections Joachim Apitz and Marc Wegner. They depict the beginnings of the modern zest of traveling and exotic dreams suddenly come true. These attractive icons of growing tourism evoke times of a new sophisticated society in motion. Technical and geographical boundaries, traditional destinations and obsolete vehicles were left behind for new horizons and acceleration in stylish voyages.

These graphic gems tell us seductive fairy tales of new perceptions and experiences of technically achievable speed. During this era, the hardships and dangers of earlier expeditions began changing into luxurious social leisure. The new glamorous way of life abandoned out-of-date platforms such as spas, operas and country houses. Journeys lost the spell of peril, pain, dirt, and wate of time. The new, safe, and comfortable options of mobility turned innovative vehicles such as zeppelins, air crafts, fast trains, and ocean liners into glittering stages for refined self-presentation and manifestation of a wealthy class. Numerous grand hotels emerged along the new routes and their landings and stations. A new lifestyle took shape, also entering private residences with its breath-taking chrome brilliance. The streamline prevailed over the ornament.

ZEITLOS – BERLIN presents rare samples of journey posters from two private collections. Most of the exhibits are for sale. With its excellent collection of authentic furniture, lamps, and accessories from the period between the Roaring Twenties and the optimistic Fifties, this gallery in the Charlottenburg Stilwerk provides the ideal location for this specific genre. Still today, such cool, elegant objects of the Machine Age fascinate us with their unique combination of sensuality and technics. A very particular highlight of the show is a souvenir of the Titanic which, though its tragic loss, initiated a worldwide change in the technical production and safety standards at the time.

With kind support by WHP Rechtsanwälte Berlin: