1999 & 2010
1999
Representing the exception that proves the rule, the poster for the 1999 Festival used a landscape format, like a film poster, and does in fact recall a scene from a musical comedy – perhaps The Jazz Singer, with the sax also featured. But the design is drenched in a forceful multi-coloured storm and immersed in sprays of hearts and an outpouring of happiness. The poster’s designer, Brazilian painter Romero Britto, perfectly summed up his artistic vision in an interview as “resolutely optimistic”. Britto lives in Miami, and his art celebrates joy and mass culture. Claude Nobs invited him to attend the Festival that year, and the artist made the most of his trip by painting a mural on the walls of the old Festival offices in Territet during a workshop.
2010
Manga is fashionable and the Brazilian Romero Britto, a friend of Claude Nobs, happily exploits this aesthetic register to create his second poster for the jazz festival. As an effigy for this 2010 edition, he draws a boy with huge eyes and crazy hair accompanied by his clever dog sporting sunglasses quietly seated on a drum. A debauchery of bright colours, geometric, whimsical patterns and hearts saturate this neo-pop visual. At the height of his fame at that time, Romero Britto was commissioned to create a poster for the major planetary spectacle of 2010: the football World Cup in South Africa.
