Schönheit

press advertising with panache. Curated by the team at MBGC.

Schönheit, literally meaning beauty in German, was the modern day equivalent of a headline for this 1926 Mercedes-Benz advertisement created by artist Edward Cucuel (a.k.a. Edward Offelsmeyer).

It was a deliberate style promoted by the car manufacturer who wanted to show that women could self-confidently conquer the automobile and illustrated this by using them as early motifs for automotive publicity.

According to Karl Benz’s biography he recalled with great pleasure that among the first buyers was a woman teacher.

“She came from faraway Hungary to see the Mannheim miracle with her own eyes,” he said.

“She was very enthusiastic, but unfortunately her financial strength was not proportionate to her enthusiasm.

“But an enthusiastic woman is never short of options, she managed to convince a colleague to share her enthusiasm, and he too sacrificed his savings for the car.”

Cucuel’s style suited the look Mercedes-Benz were looking for. The American-born artist was the son of a German newspaper publisher and was a prodigious illustrator, working at The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco when he was just 17 before he moved to Paris where he entered the Academie Julian and the Academie Colarossi, later studying under Gerome at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts.

After traveling through Europe to study the old masters, he settled in Germany in 1899 and worked as an illustrator in Leipzig and Berlin for several papers and books as well as other publications all over Europe, including the Illustrated London News.

His painting style, heavily influenced by the early German Expressionists, was further enhanced by his association with artist Leo Putz, where he spent five summers living by the Chiemsee Lake in Bavaria where they painted nudes ‘en plein air’, which set the tone for his later work.

Cucuel created a number of illustrations for Mercedes-Benz that were used in posters and advertising materials including the Frau in Rot (Woman in Red), depicting a woman racing driver and revered as one of the most striking advertising motifs of the 1920s.