Vintage Travel Posters

Many modern clothing and home décor trends are inspired by styles from the 1920s - 1960s. Vintage-style travel art and airline advertisments are popular choices among people who want to decorate on the cheap. Inexpensive wall posters add cheer and retro flair without clashing with other design themes.

One of the most successful artists working in the retro-realism style is Kerne Erickson, a living illustrator who has been active since the 1970s. Many of his iconic travel posters look like they could have been ripped from the pages of a magazine published more than 75 years ago, yet they were all drawn and painted much later in the 20th century. As an artist working for several airlines (including the now-defunct Braniff), he created scores of highly-recognizeable tourism ads for California, Hawai'i, Cuba, Tahiti, national parks, and other destinations.

Other artists in the vintage and vintage-style category are Ignacio Zabaleta and Jean-Gabriel Domergue. Domergue was active in the 1920s through 1950s and is considered the inventor of the pin-up girl poster. He painted elegant, eye-catching promotions for Monte Carlo and French resort towns. (Images courtesy of Allposters.com.)