St Moritz Piz Nair Vintage Travel Poster – Martin Peikert – 1948
This vintage Swiss travel poster was created by the popular poster artist Martin Peikert. It was produced to advertise the two easiest methods of getting to the summit of Piz Nair, the highest point in the Corviglia ski area.
At 10,340 feet tall, Piz Nair is one of the tallest mountains in the Glarus Alps. It’s located on the border between the Swiss cantons of Uri and Graubünden, and it’s a popular spot for both hikers and mountain climbers. The summit offers stunning views of both cantons, as well as of the other mountains in the Glarus Alps. While it’s possible to hike to the top of Piz Nair without any technical equipment, most visitors use either the funicular or the cable car. Both will transport you to within 30 metres of the summit and the stunning mountain views on offer.
The St Moritz-Corviglia Funicular railway with its famous blue train was built in 1913. The Standseilbah as it is known in German links the resort of St Moritz with the Corviglia summit. The complete journey is made up of two different gauge rail tracks that necessitate passengers changing trains at Chantarella station. At Corviglia, the funicular connects with an aerial tramway to the mountain summit.
In the Peikert poster, the artist has also made a big feature of the resort’s newly-built cable car. It was the first cable car in the Engadine valley that was opened in 1955 with its construction indebted to the municipality of St. Moritz, the St. Moritz tourist board, and the St Moritz mountain rail and cableways company. Its construction cost 1.65 million Swiss francs.
The journey from Corviglia to Piz Nair by gondola cable car rises up to 3,056 metres. The mile long trip takes around 17 minutes to complete and passes the famous 60+ year old statue of an alpine ibex on the way. The ibex is known locallyas steinbock and it stands near the peak of Piz Nair overlooking the Upper Engadin landscape of St Moritz, Switzerland.
Whilst this poster is not one of Peikert’s most popular poster designs, its scarcity ensures that original lithographic prints of this design do well when they come up at auction. The poster has been know to command an auction room sale price of £5,800.
Other Martin Peikert Travel Posters
The highly respected Swiss painter and poster artist Martin Peikert is the artist behind this fabulous MOB, Montreux Bernese Oberland skiing poster. Peikert is well known for the realism and precision of his wonderful poster illustrations. He created dozens of travel posters and skiing posters for ski resorts across the Alps.
Some of his best-known and most popular posters include his Gstaad poster featuring a couple on a ski lift heading towards ‘the moon’. His poster advertising St Moritz with a cable car heading towards the snow-covered mountain peak.
For many of his posters, Peikert used his first wife Henriette as his muse and model. One example is his Les Diablerets poster featuring a skier being pulled up a ski slope with a sprite of her shoulders. One features her travelling to a ski resort on the roof of the MOB Railway and another MOB Railway poster shows her asleep on the roof of a small Swiss chalet. One of his best in my opinion is his iconic Champery ski poster of a woman relaxing in the snow.
Our posters are carefully and professionally created from vintage originals. Whilst great care is taken in the production of these posters, we also try to maintain a vintage feel, so there may be small imperfections, fold marks, scuffs, tears, or marks that were part of the original poster master. If these do appear they should be visible on the larger views of the item on this listing. The originals of many of the posters we offer can cost many thousands of pounds, so whilst these posters look great, especially framed and mounted on a wall, they are intended as fun, affordable reproductions and not intended fine art prints.
The 50x70cm version has been specially produced to be used in conjunction with Ikea’s 50x70cm Ribba picture frame which currently retails for around £15. So you can bag a bargain of print and frame for a great price.
