1952 Cycles Alcyon Advertising Poster

Alcyon Cycling Team has the Winning Cards This original Alcyon advertising poster is built around a perfect visual idea, cycling champions as a winning hand of cards. At the top, a large painted hand fans out oversized playing cards, each card featuring a stylised portrait of a racer in a brightly colored jersey. The faces are drawn like mid-century magazine illustrations, with clean lines, confident expressions, and each rider framed as a “card” you would want to be holding. Below the artwork, the poster becomes wonderfully direct and typographic, touting recent wins by riders on the Alycon Team. The headline reads “Tour d’Algérie 1952 (2.500 kilomètres)” and highlights  the overall winner: “Classement général, 1er Vincent Vitetta.”  A second block announces “Grand Prix de Nice 1952” and names the winner, “1er Dominique Forlini,” The bottom third is all brand power. “Sur bicyclette ALCYON” leads into a huge ALCYON logotype that dominates the sheet, followed by the line “Ces victoires sont le résultat d’une fabrication consciencieuse avant tout,” which translates to “These victories are the result of careful workmanship above all.” In the corner, it even says “Affiche d’intérieur,” a reminder that it was meant to be displayed on a shop wall, right where customers could take in the winners and the brand name in one glance. The Alcyon cycling team (1905 -1962) was one of the great early “trade teams,” built around the Alcyon bicycle brand and stacked with top talent in the sport’s formative decades. The Team won Paris-Roubaix an epic 12 times. They won the Tour de France four straight years before World War I, taking overall victory with François Faber (1909), Octave Lapize (1910), Gustave Garrigou (1911), and Odile Defraye (1912), and they also captured the Tour’s team prize from 1909 to 1912, later repeating that team prize run from 1927 to 1929. In the late 1920s, Alcyon’s dominance was so pronounced that multiple Tour winners came directly from the squad, including Nicolas Frantz and Maurice De Waele, emblematic of an era when powerful commercial teams could shape the entire race. This poster has been archivally and professionally linen-backed. Virtually all original vintage posters of this era were viewed as temporary advertising and were printed on fragile, thin paper. While expensive, linen backing is a conservation method used to mount, stabilize, preserve, and protect vintage posters, allowing them to be displayed or framed without compromising their value. This poster is an original first printing, not a reproduction. Year: 1952 Artist: N/A Affiches Gaillaird, Paris – Affiche d’intérieur Size: 40 x 60 cm (15 ¾  x 23 ½  inches) Posters are sold unframed. Framed images are display ideas only. This is a one-of-a-kind item; please review the photos carefully to determine the condition. This item is listed on multiple platforms, and availability is subject to prior sale elsewhere.