French poster artist Léo Kouper is dead

The posters of the films Modern Times and The Dictator, drawn by Léo Kouper.

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Some of his posters are part of the collective unconscious.

Illustrator Léo Kouper died "in his sleep" on Monday at his home in Paris at the age of 94, his daughter, Corinne Kouper, announced.

Awarded in 1974 by the Cannes Festival for the poster of the film Emmanuelle by Just Jaeckin, Léo Kouper is also known for the posters accompanying the re-release, in French cinemas in the 1950s, of films by Charlie Chaplin: 

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and

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"One second to tell a story"

"I try to imagine the finished work, and then I just have to copy!

(…) It just takes a lot of imagination and concentration.

You don't always have to make an idea poster.

There is also the layout, a lot of things, more or less complicated.

Sometimes, just over the phone when ordering, I draw a sketch, and I come back to it after a few tries, "he explained in the pages of

in 2013, taking care to specify:" The director movie theater has an hour and a half or two to tell a story, the poster artist has one second.

"

Léo Kouper has also produced posters for advertising and for several Parisian theaters.

In 2015, he created a drawing on the attack on Charlie Hebdo: a portrait of Chaplin whose famous hat, transformed into a target, is riddled with bullets.

In recent days, Léo Kouper has been working on the illustration for a forthcoming Vladimir Cosma album.

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