Alpha Bank is jointly organising, together with the Benaki Museum and GR Design magazine, the exhibition “The New ‘Salon des Cent’. International Poster Exhibition: Hommage to Toulouse-Lautrec”, which opened at the Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe on September 25 and will be on display through November 12, 2017.

In 2001, on the occasion of the 100-year anniversary from the death of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,100 renowned graphic designers from around the world produced one poster each, as a tribute to the artist and his work. These posters first went on display at the exhibition “Le Nouveau Salon des Cent” at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, in the winter of 2001.

The Exhibition organisers had asked participants to include in their posters the sentence Le nouveau Salon des Cent. Exposition Internationale d’affiches. Hommage or Ode à Toulouse Lautrec, but gave them complete creative freedom regarding theme and execution.

Sixteen years later, the Exhibition is on display in Athens, with the following additions:

• Five original posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and one by Pierre Bonnard, from the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutzos Museum’s collection.
• Sixteen posters produced by 16 Greek artists 16 years later, along the lines of the 2001 Exhibition.

The Exhibition is also accompanied by portraits of Toulouse-Lautrec, designed by students of the Vakalo College of Art & Design in different techniques, in sketchbooks. The texture and shade of the paper provided the creative background for the students’ imaginative artistic experiments on the portraits of the prominent French artist.

As part of the Exhibition, Danièle Devynck, director of the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, the artist’s birthplace, will give a lecture titled  "Toulouse-Lautrec affichiste" (The posters of Toulouse-Lautrec) at the amphitheatre of the Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe on Thursday, November 9, 2017, at 19:00.

The Exhibition will run through November 12, 2017.

The New “Salon des Cent”
International Poster Exhibition: Hommage to Toulouse-Lautrec
Benaki Museum Pireos Street Annexe
138 Pireos and Andronikou, 118 54 ATHENS
Opening Times:
Thursdays and Sundays 10.00 – 18.00
Fridays and Saturdays 10.00 – 22.00