A Short History of Art Deco Travel & Sport Posters
For about two decades, the poster was one of the most exciting art forms in Europe. Between the World Wars, railway companies, ocean liners, airlines and sporting events all competed for attention on the street, and they hired the best graphic artists of the day to do it. The result was a body of work we still hang on our walls a century later.
The golden age
The poster boom of the 1920s and 1930s coincided with the rise of Art Deco, the design movement named after the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Travel was becoming aspirational and accessible to a growing middle class, and transport companies needed a visual language that promised speed, glamour and modernity. The poster delivered exactly that, on a scale large enough to stop a passer-by on a boulevard.
What makes the Art Deco style recognisable
Art Deco posters share a clear visual grammar:
- Bold, simplified shapes - forms reduced to their essentials, with strong silhouettes.
- Streamlined geometry - sweeping diagonals and curves that suggest motion and machine-age speed.
- Flat blocks of confident colour rather than soft, realistic shading.
- Strong, integrated typography - the lettering is part of the composition, not an afterthought.
- A sense of optimism and luxury, whether selling a train, a ski resort or a tennis tournament.
Artists such as A.M. Cassandre set the standard, treating a steamship or a locomotive as a near-abstract symbol of progress. The same principles carried into sport, where posters distilled the energy of a match or a race into a single dynamic image.
Travel and sport, side by side
Travel posters sold a destination: the Riviera, the Alps, the great rail and shipping routes. Sport posters sold an event and a feeling of physical movement - the arc of a serve, the lean of a skier, the speed of a cyclist. Both relied on the same Deco tools, which is why they sit so naturally together on a wall today.
From the street to the wall
Originals were printed as large lithographs and pasted onto hoardings, so very few survived in good condition. That scarcity is part of why authentic examples now sell for high prices at auction. For most homes, a faithful reproduction on quality paper is the practical way to live with the style. What matters is that the printing respects the original artwork: accurate colour, clean lines and a paper stock that does justice to the bold flat blocks of colour the period is known for.
Why these posters endure
Art Deco design is graphic and uncluttered, so it reads instantly and works in modern interiors. The optimism of the originals still carries, and the subjects - places we want to visit, sports we love - are timeless. The style also sits comfortably next to almost anything: a single Deco travel poster anchors a minimalist room, while a cluster of sport prints brings energy to a study or hallway. A good reproduction on quality paper lets you bring that golden-age confidence into a contemporary room.
See the style in our collections
Explore the Art Deco poster collection, the vintage travel posters, and our sport posters, including the tennis poster collection. For the wider movement, the geometric and Bauhaus posters show the design ideas that ran alongside Art Deco.
All prints are produced on 275gsm FSC fine-art paper with archival pigment inks. Free shipping over 49 EUR and 30-day free returns.
