Before TV and radio, the main way of reaching the public was with large, eye-catching posters. Theatre, silent film and opera would be advertised with colourful images fixed to walls or fences. Most have been lost or destroyed, but Los Angeles art gallery Century Guild has a collection of peculiar and macabre prints from Germany, Austria, France and Italy dating back to 1880-1890. “What I find most striking is the modernity of the visual message,” says the gallery’s founder, Thomas Negovan. “We tend to view the turn of the century through a sepia-toned lens of quaintness, when the truth is that the world then was just as dynamic and thrilling as our lives are today.”

centuryguild.net