Chaumont is a charming small french town situated about halfway between Basel and Paris, or about 100 km north of Dijon. In 1990, the city decided to become an international center for posters and started the yearly Rencontres Internationales des Arts Graphiques under the expert guidance of Alain Weill. This is a big event, with a poster competition, exhibitions of the previous year's winners, a seminar, student exhibitions and workshops, a banquet, concerts, an exhibition of old posters from the extensive collection the local library, sometimes an auction or a poster fair. About every available space is used for this purpose, the cinema, an old theater, City Hall, a chapel and a garage and a museum. Above all, the weekend of the opening, June 6/7 this year, is a good occasion to meet poster designers and fans from all over the world.

The prize winners

The theme of this years poster competition was Photography, and about 5000 invitations to submit recent works were sent to poster designers in forty countries. 1350 posters were received and prescreened down to 84 by a french jury, and these are exhibited and shown in the catalogue. From these, the international jury composed of Claude Claude Baillargeon, France, April Greiman, USA, Holger Matthies, Germany, Makoto Saito, Japan, and Ralph Schraivogel, Switzerland, selected four prize winners:

1. Prize Fang Chen, China Victory

2. Prize Les Graphistes Associes, France Saison 96/97, Theatre de Rungis

3. Prize Les Graphistes Associes, France La Fausse Suivante, Theatre de Rungis

ICOGRADA Prize Anabella Salem and Gabriel Mateu, Grupo El Fantasma de Heredia, Argentina Hommage de deux inconnus a Henryk Tomaszewski

For those who are not familiar with the work of the eminent polish designer Henryk Tomaszewski to which the prize winning photograph of a crack in the pavement refers, we show the original on the right.

Henryk Tomaszewski, Poland A tale from Irkutsk, theater poster, 1967

Prize winners

Exhibitions

Street art

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