Susipria Poster 2020

Robert Sammelin made this Suspiria poster sometime in the 20th century, probably with some kind of digital painting program. The colour palette is so arresting: a huge red face looms out from a blue background. The colours are separated into blocks, in a way that feels both modern and retro. You can tell that the image has been digitally painted by the airbrush effects in the edges of the face, and the smoothness of the colour gradients on the peacock feathers. That peacock is so strange! The lurid colours make it look like something from a hallucination. It fans out beneath the character, but she doesn't seem to notice it. The darkness and unnatural colour contrasts almost overwhelm the central figure, trapping her in the grip of the huge face above. This combination of beauty and terror reminds me of the graphic art of someone like Paul Peter Piech, who used similar combinations of intense colour and simple form to create political posters in the mid 20th Century. In the end, it's the ambiguity that hooks you.