Achille Lucien Mauzan
Achille Lucien Mauzan - Art Deco Poster Artist who Made an Impact in Three Countries
Achille Lucien Mauzan was born on October 15, 1883, in Gap, a small French town in the South Alps. His father was a high-school teacher, but he inherited a drawing talent from his mother, whose siblings also loved to draw and they were good at it. In fact, Achille's first art lessons came from his mom, and his official art knowledge in Lyon's School of Arts (Palais Saint Pierre) was financed by his uncle. In Lyon, he achieved several rewards for his fabric prints and still-life paintings.
His family decided to reward him with a trip to Italy, a must-see destination for every aspiring artist, where he was accompanied with a school friend in 1905. Initially, they planned a trip to Florence and Rome but stopped in Milano, where the first business opportunities showed in the advertising industry. Soon, he started illustrating for magazines and creating picture postcards.
He immediately started working wherever he saw an opportunity. Achille Luciano, as he soon became known, illustrated for magazines, designed postcards, and sculpted in bronze and ceramic plasters. His career took over after moving to Torino with an emerging movie industry. Between 1909 and 1914, Mauzan created around 1,500 movie posters!
Mauzan's next stop was Milano, with another technological novelty. He created advertisements for the musical company Casa Ricordi for about five years. During this time, he collaborated on several opera- and movie-related projects and even directed two movies starring his friend Elettra Raggio. His non-stop work led to a nervous breakdown. The end of the war demanded new approaches, and for some time, he worked for Magical Posters (simply called Maga after the owner's nickname) by Giovanni Magagnoli. But this couldn't last long due to Magagnoli's custom to replace Mauzan's signatures on posters with his own.
In Rome, he met Ferruzio Palazzi, who involved him in the ceramic business. We also have to mention Mauzan's work on World War-related advertisements (posters and postcards). Eventually, he returned to Milan in 1922, when his daughter was born. In 1924, he established an agency with Federico Morzenti. The company was called Mauzan-Morzenti Posters, and it was a success. Mauzan decided to find new challenges across the Atlantic and took his family to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he threw an exhibition and established another company, Editorial Posters Mauzan. During the next few years, he made a huge impact on the commercial art scene, but in 1932, his wife got sick, and they returned to Italy.
A few weeks later, she died, and Achille soon decided he needed another change of environment. This time, he moved to Paris, where he worked for different companies. In Paris, he never achieved anything similar to his success in Italy or in Argentina. During the Second World War, he lived between Paris and Gap, his birth town, depending on business orders. After the war, more and more time was spent in Gap, where he wrote a science fiction novel, The mind-blowing power of Rupert Saint-Georges. Of course, he illustrated it (with 50 pictures). Achille Mauzan died in Gap on January 15, 1952.
His work, deeply influenced by the Art Deco movement, is characterized by humor and bright colors. Especially his posters are highly collectible and can often surpass several thousand dollars per piece.