The Title Is Continued in the Picture

The exhibition The Title Is Continued in the Picture is devoted to Hans Hillmann (born in 1925), one of the most creative and significant film poster designers in post-War Germany. Featuring around 90 examples from three decades (1952 – 1974), the exhibition at the German Poster Museum presents a comprehensive overview of the poster designer’s oeuvre.

Hillmann not only succeeded in his works in ignoring the formal language of the Nazi era, but also managed to avoid the carefree ‘loudness’ of Germany’s Economic Miracle years. His style was particularly inspired by the 1920s. In 1952 Hillmann initially adopted a graphic, illustrative style, while from 1960 onwards he began to include photography in his works, sometimes as backgrounds and later as photomontages. But it was repeatedly his exploration of the respective film’s content that made him decide which image he would develop, how the text would be incorporated, and which creative instruments seemed most suitable for realizing the visual concept. In the process he used existing characteristics or cinematic motifs of the film in question and integrated them into the poster design. From the start, the complexity of the resulting poster was impressive. Thanks to his clients Neue Filmkunst Walter Kirchner and Atlas Filmverleih, the more demanding films were also adequately promoted.

For over 20 years, innovative, varied design focusing on a single topic created a quality and variability that advanced the development of the poster in Germany in a virtually unique manner. A major driver of this development was undoubtedly Hans Hillmann, who repeatedly succeeded in setting new standards with his works, such as the posters for the films Storm Over Asia (1961), Seven Samurai (1962), To Be or Not to Be (1964), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1966), Battleship Potemkin (1967) and A Woman Is a Woman (1970) to name just a few.

An accompanying catalogue is being published by Edition Folkwang / Steidl.