Vintage Posters | Black Pearl | Giclee Print by Stefan Norblin

This poster is for a movie called “Black Pearl” is about a Polish seaman who returns home from Tahiti with a native lover and a fortune in sacred pearls, and gets seduced by a married woman, unaware she is part of a gang trying to get his riches. The movie stars  Eugeniusz Bodo (1899-1943) who was a film director, producer and one of the most popular Polish actors and comedians of the inter-war period. Towards the end of that decade he also became a successful entrepreneur, a co-owner of a successful film studio, a café and a producers company. Arrested by the Soviets in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, he perished in the Gulag. The poster artist is none other than the famous Stefan Norblin (1892-1952). Norblin was acclaimed for poster design, paintings, commercial art and book covers, and created a popular series of travel posters advertising Polish cities and regions. Norblin’s painting skills gained him a reputation for fine portraiture, and he portrayed celebrities and important figures. When the Second World War began, they left Poland and eventually reached Iraq, where the artist created portraits of the king and his family. In 1941, the Norblins moved to India, where he worked on commission from local noble families. The Norblins left India for the United States in 1946, settling near San Francisco, where he found work in a decorating firm and painted portraits of prominent Americans (see “Portrait of Gen. Douglas MacArthur”, 1948). In the 1950s, problems with his eyesight, which were already haunting him, became severe. Norblin suspected that the illness causing his sight to fail was cancer. He couldn’t bear the prospect of not being able to work, and committed suicide.