The festivities of May in Córdoba come to an end with the Fair of la Salud (Our Lady of Health) and the announcing poster is very important, a true tradition. These posters have evolved in design, adjusting throughout time to the particular fashion of every period of history, as well as in format. The first ones –as of today genuine gems for collectors– were made in a big format that would easily reached 2 meters in height, following in the footsteps of bullfighting posters, with which they had to compete, and were usually made in lithographs. Those are specially valuable for collectors as they are of great beauty.

However, the Civil War and its desolated aftermath, with shortage of all sorts of supplies, forced the posters to take a smaller size, loosing a big part of their charm and value. From that point onward posters would never recover that old titanic size of the early XXth century. Traditionally, the poster of the Fair was yet another event in May’s healthy cultural agenda. The poster of each Fair would usually be chosen by an open popular contest; and an exhibition would then show all the competing designs. It is, however, no longer done in this fashion but instead a designer is directly appointed by the City Hall to come up with a design for the Fair, cutting off the competition. This particularly way of doing things has resulted in some disregard for the poster as people no longer feel part of the tradition and often rage against it. Let’s hope that good sense comes back and reinstate better-known ways of doing things, those ways that gave us the best posters of the Fair.

This year the poster is nonetheless quite emotional and beautiful as the author made it inspired by the sketch that Tomás Egea Azcona did for the Fair of 1985. Tomás, who is no more among us living creatures, was an artist deeply loved in this city; many of his creations dress Córdoba’s walls and streets still. Besides being an excellent cartoonist, Tomás was also a great ceramic and stained glass designer with a characteristic geometrical, harmonious and cheerful style. I recommend, if you are in Córdoba this May, that you go visit  the Anthology Exhibition shown in the the Vimcorsa room. A true delight to eyesight that matches to perfection the colors of a May in Córdoba.

The collection of Fair posters.

The wiki of Córdoba, the Cordobapedia, has been gathering for while now all the posters of the Fair in a web page up until this last edition. A nice virtual walk through this beautiful tradition.

https://cordobapedia.wikanda.es/wiki/Carteles_de_la_Feria_de_Córdoba