To our collector, interior designer and eBay friends worldwide: The Cuban Poster Gallery in Washington D.C. is offering a huge selection of handmade Cuban silk-screen movie posters, many of which work beautifully well together. To view all of the posters, please visit our eBay Store ( stores.ebay.com/CubanPosterGallery ), where new listings are being posted every week in both the Auction and Buy It Now/Best Offer formats.
The Cuban Poster Gallery appreciates your business!
Our regular price for this poster is $998. Here we are offering an extremely rare ORIGINAL 1st Edition 1969 Cuban silk-screen poster, designed for the Japanese movie Karate Champion (KARATE CAMPEON in Spanish), starring the internationally famed martial artist, actor, singer and film director Shinichi Chiba, who is widely known as Sonny.
This spectacular 20 x 30 inch poster (a standard size, so easy and inexpensive to frame) was designed by Cuban graphics art master Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, whose artwork can be found in prestigious collections worldwide, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' in Los Angeles and the Victoria and Albert Museum's in London. Bachs' work also was highlighted in an extensive 2019 exhibition of Cuban poster art at the prestigious Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Decorative Arts Museum) in Paris.
This bold, in-your-face (quite literally) handmade poster in this listing--a Bachs masterpiece--was made in the Cuban Film Institute's silk-screen workshop in Havana in 1969.
Condition of the original poster is good for its age and has been expertly mounted on archival Japanese paper. Imperfections include some scratches, foxing, paint loss and wrinkles that were repaired and smoothed over with the archival backing. Please examine the 9 photos we have posted to judge the condition for yourself. Buy with 100 percent confidence; posters purchased on eBay from the Cuban Poster Gallery can be returned for any reason within 30 days.
About shipping: For buyers with an address in the United States, your purchase will be shipped FREE by USPS Ground Advantage or UPS with delivery confirmation. For international buyers (outside of the United States), eBay will calculate the cost of shipping and any required Customs duties and taxes.
(We are also separately offering a book about the work of Eduardo Muñoz Bachs. You can find this book and others about Cuban art in our eBay Store under the heading CUBAN BOOKS.)
TITLE: KARATE CAMPEON (Karate Champion), designed for the first showing in Cuba of this Japanese movie, starring martial arts star Shinichi Chiba, who is widely known as Sonny.
DESIGNER: Eduardo Muñoz Bachs (1937-2001)
YEAR: 1969
MEDIUM: Silk-screen / Serigraph
SIZE: 20 x 30 inches; 51 x 76 cm
ORIGIN: the ICAIC (Cuban Film Institute) silk-screen workshop in Havana, Cuba
A few words about collecting Cuba's silk-screen movie posters:
For more than 60 years, the Cuban Film Institute has been designing silk-screened posters for most every movie shown on the island, whether the films originated in Cuba, the United States, Brazil, Japan or Italy. In the midst of the Cold War 1960s and 1970s, many of the subtitled foreign films shown in Cuba came from the island nation's communist allies in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and even North Korea.
Unlike in the United States, where movie posters are often dominated by images of Hollywood stars, the Cubans assign a graphic artist to design an original piece of artwork for each film. These posters are widely recognized in graphic design circles as stylish works of art, handmade one color at a time and often under difficult circumstances (at various times, paint and even paper have been in short supply on the island.)
Cuba's silk-screen movie posters are nothing less than museum pieces. But don't take our word for it! Examples of Cuban poster art can be found in the permanent collections of museums across the globe from the Victoria & Albert in London to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as in prestigious institutions such as the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.
Adding to their collectability, Cuba's movie posters are produced in relatively small numbers. Typically, a few hundred copies are made for each film, although the runs have been as low as 50. Responding to demand from collectors, the Cuban Film Institute has re-screened some of its more popular posters. That's why some posters created in the 1960s and 1970s began reappearing on the Caribbean island in the 1990s and 2000s.
Further adding to their collectability, many of Cuba's vintage posters are imperiled. Although a few hundred copies may have been screened originally, relatively few have survived, due to the island's wet and humid climate, inadequate storage facilities in Havana and improper handling in Cuba and elsewhere. To us, these survivors are rare beauties, even those with obvious flaws. We are proud to have rescued hundreds of posters from almost certain extinction by storing them in an air conditioned, acid-free environment.
We at the Cuban Poster Gallery offer both 1st and 2nd Edition posters to our customers on eBay and in our Washington D.C. gallery. We consider both to be collectible, and (in response to a question we often get) all of these posters were legally imported because the U.S. government exempts artwork from its economic embargo against Cuba. While the pricier originals are favored by some collectors, the re-screens are also collectible because they were made in the same Havana workshop as the originals. Note that we never sell unauthorized reproductions that have been cranked out in print shops in the U.S. and Europe.
To our eBay customers, we pledge to accurately describe the posters we list and price them fairly based on condition and scarcity. Have a question? Please don't hesitate to contact us.
To view more distinctive Cuban graphics, we invite you to visit the Cuban Poster Gallery's eBay Store: http://stores.ebay.com/cubanpostergallery