Detail from a poster for an art book fair

MEXICO meets the Netherlands.
SUGAR SKULL meets Vanitas.
FOLK ART meets the Renaissance.

This is the detail of a poster that I designed and illustrated for an art book fair that took place in Beirut in 2013.
The special guest of this edition was Mexico.

I created a still life inspired by Dutch Vanitas (a flower, a skull, and book)… but with a twist! The skull disguised itself as a sugar skull to hint to Mexico – the guest of honor. The illustrative approach was a digitally-generated screen printing style. I initially limited the color palette to 3, but the Mexican embassy asked for a specific palette of 5 colors (the color references were from a logo for Mexico as country of culture in 2013). Even though the posters were printed in offset with CMYK inks, the colors were vibrant and quite striking.

Client: Beirut Art Book Fair
Format: A2, in CMYK (detail)
Year: 2013