For decades Pierre-Laurent Brenot worked at the heart of the French fashion industry, cooperating with brands such as Saint-Laurent, Nina Ricci, Rochas, Dior, Hermès , until in late 1940s he found a different calling.
In the next 15 years Brenot became one the world’s most recognizable affichiste – poster artist – of all times.
Brenot’s works were colorful, daring – and unapogetically sexy, earning him the title of “le “père de la pin-up française »/ the father of the “French pin-up”.
Some of the ads look suprisingly modern – at least the models do. Look at this promotion of the French motor oil & lubricants firm Bardahl, done more than half a century ago!
But we are the skiing site and, therefore, shall concentrate on the Frenchman’s two known art-pieces related to le ski de fond:
In 1950 Brenot produces A Glance Back, an offset lithograph depicting a young skier, who is visibly hot from all that trail exercise.
In 2015 that lithograph fetched USD 2,650 at the Cristie’s auction, almost doubling its price estimate.
…In 1952 Pierre-Laurent Brenot returns to the subject of overdressed skiers and does Marie des Neiges. Perhaps, the same female skier, but now older and wiser goes out skiing in nothing but a trench-coat and a piece of what decades later would be called “thermal underwear”. That piece got USD 1,753 at the Christi’s action in 2012
Brenot’s daring tactics of getting more people on the ski tracks ( because that’s what it was all about, right?) were, probably, somewhat ahead of its time – and were not to be repeated until the famous Lange Girls poster series, feauturing Pamela Anderson among the others.
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