GET CARTER - original UK quad - 1971, Michael Caine, beyond rare

Get Carter -- Buckle up, because this stunner does not come on the market very often. This is the very rare, much prized original UK quad from 1971. 30 inches by 40 inches.

Printed in Nottingham by Lonsdale and Bartholomew, who've printed release art for everything from "Diamonds are Forever" to "Close Encounters" to "Carry on Camping".. Those two copies are linen-backed; this version is not, so this is a rare chance for a true fan to mount it on linen. Or for a canny investor prepared to let this grow in value. Mike Hodges' gritty gangster thriller is now enshrined in Britain as a endlessly quoted cult classic. You're a big man, but you're out of shape.

With me it's a full-time job. I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. I'm the villain in the family, remember.

Some pinholes and folding creases (which are not considered a defect as all posters were folded back then). Plus a couple of nicks.

As you will be able see in the close-up shots. But nothing mounting on linen couldn't tidy up to make this a double-barreled knock-out when framed. The poster has been stored folded in a plastic sleeve for most of its 50 years, so the colors are strong and vibrant, especially's Caine's eye-popping flower power suit, and condition does full justice to the. Italian artist at the forefront of popular illustration in the 1960s and 70s.

For Get Carter, Arnaldo Putzu dressed the gangster Michael Caine in an unlikely floral jacket. Fri 21 Sep 2012 13.48 EDT. The Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu, who has died aged 85, was one of the most distinctive illustrators of his generation, painting film posters from Italian realist cinema to the Carry On series and book and magazine covers. While his long career started and finished in.

His work in Britain encapsulated the whole look of popular illustration in the 1960s and 70s. Putzu was born in Rome, the son of a senior Italian navy officer.

At about the age of 10, he began painting seriously, studied art at the Rome Academy, and found a love of portraiture, which he practised by painting his relatives. While doing illustration work in Milan in 1948, he met the poster artist Enrico de Seta, who took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming Italian film industry. After four years with De Seta, Putzu felt confident enough to set up his own studio. He worked for, among others, Augusto Favalli, who then controlled a dazzling roster of artists employed by the Cinecittà film studios. Putzu created some of the most famous Italian film posters of the 50s and early 60s, painting such stars as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. His depiction of the voluptuous female figure in Poor But Handsome in 1956 was condemned by the Pope. The most powerful British film company of the period was Rank, which controlled a network of overseas distribution offices, including an outpost in Rome. A Rank executive based there, Geoff Martin, was impressed by the poster artwork coming out of Studio Favalli and spotted an opportunity. Creative head of Rank's UK agency Downton Advertising, the studio gradually began employing Italian artists to work on British film publicity. At first Pulford simply flew back and forth between London and Rome, carrying bulging suitcases full of artwork, but by the late 1950s the artists themselves were being brought over to Britain. One of the most brilliant of them, Renato Fratini, was based in the UK throughout the 1960s. Putzu, a friend of Fratini, began to work for Pulford in the late 1950s.

His first British poster was for The Secret Place (1957), featuring an atmospheric portrait of the Rank starlet Belinda Lee. With his UK commissions steadily increasing, Putzu was keen to join Fratini. He arrived in Britain in 1967 and went to work on the poster for Morecambe and Wise's film The Magnificent Two. After a couple of years Putzu was given an office in the Great Portland Street studios of Feref Associates, a new breakaway group of five former Downton artists, led by the designer Eddie Paul, who specialised in film work and had gained several major distributor accounts. Arnaldo Putzu at work on a Carry On film poster.

When, in 1973, Fratini died, Putzu found himself the top-rated and most in-demand poster illustrator working in Britain. His output over the 1970s included oddball Hammer Horror fantasies such as Creatures the World Forgot and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. For the Get Carter posters he put the ruthless gangster Michael Caine into an unlikely floral jacket, demonstrating the whimsical humour that makes his best posters unforgettable. At the same time he made another key contact in Colin Shelbourn, art editor at the newly launched children's TV magazine Look-In, who wanted an illustrator to give his weekly covers a cinematic look. Putzu thus painted almost every Look-In cover from 1973 through to 1981, and in the process amassed a vivid catalogue of 70s popular culture, from On the Buses to the Bay City Rollers. By the end of the decade, the rate of his commissions was slowing. With cinema audiences in decline, painted artwork for film posters was starting to look like an expensive luxury to increasingly cash-strapped distributors. Putzu's final British posters appeared around 1980, and included titles such as the nostalgic war-drama The Sea Wolves and a blockbusting reissue of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway, featuring Steve McQueen snarling down the barrel of a gun. Meanwhile, at Look-In the focus became pop, illustrated with photographs rather than artwork. There were a few later TV-personality posters, but by the mid-80s Putzu's commercial work had dwindled, and rather reluctantly, for he loved Britain he flew back to Rome in October 1985. Putzu continued to paint, turning to privately commissioned portraits, still-lifes and landscapes, and never really retired. When he began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease in his early 80s, he found for a while that the symptoms could be alleviated by painting.

He always welcomed admirers and recounted sometimes unlikely anecdotes with a painter's eye for the telling detail the story of how he was once briefly mistaken for David Cassidy by an over-excited crowd of teenagers outside a TV studio was a particular favourite. He is survived by his wife, Liliana, son, George, and daughter, Susan.

Arnaldo Putzu, commercial artist, born 6 August 1927; died 1 September 2012. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I've had a few high points in my poster collection over the decades -- a complete set of original Connery 007 one-sheets, a Sunset Blvd'dead in the pool' lobby card -- but this was the rarest one and hardest to track down. The only reason I'm letting it go is I have no room left to hang it after redecorating. Still can't believe I'm letting this go! Hurry before I change my mind. The item "GET CARTER - original UK quad - 1971, Michael Caine, beyond rare" is in sale since Sunday, October 25, 2020.

This item is in the category "Entertainment Memorabilia\Movie Memorabilia\Posters\Originals-International\1970-79". The seller is "macmacmac007" and is located in Sherman Oaks, California. This item can be shipped worldwide.

Industry: Movies
Object Type: Poster
Original/Reproduction: Original
Year: 1970-79
Size: 30 x 40 inch