Arnold Nechansky
Frohe Ostern! (Postcard no. 794)
circa 1912
Classically elongated, from the typeface to the egg and the gazelle-like duo, Nechansky’s style enunciates its subjects with an elegant flow of form. The individual components of the illustration are drawn to simulate each others’ visual vernacular, enabling each one (with a bit of imagination) to ‘sidle’ into the two-dimensional skin of another, therefore uniting the design completely and without interruption. The letters, for example, mirror the forms of the ladies, while the ladies themselves precariously perch with a slim featheriness that echoes that of the F all the way to the !. Even the red eggshell, cradled by the woman in white, creates one of the three stepping stones helping to draw the eye smoothly across the postcard, beginning naturally with the uncoiling of beaded necklaces at the top; followed by the great yawning central ‘O’ (perhaps acting as the woman’s seat cushion); and circling (or might one say ‘oval-ing’?) right down to the standing woman’s balloon-like pouffe, only to draw the eye back once more to the top - to begin again, as one should (thrice) on Easter Day.
