Magic and stage illusion had a golden age roughly from the 1880s through the mid-20th century, when performers competed for audiences through sheer spectacle and the posters advertising their shows had to match. Printers pushed color lithography to its limits to capture levitating bodies, vanishing acts, and impossible escapes. Houdini is the name most people know, but the era produced dozens of performers who commissioned equally ambitious artwork. The pieces shown here are period originals from that tradition.
