Wilshire Center

“The poster,” Adolphe Mouron Cassandre wrote in 1926, “is chiefly a word.” A stickler for the importance of text in advertising and a creator of typefaces, Cassandre (as he preferred to be known, in the event his paintings should some day catapult him out of the realm of commerce) also poured Gallic charm and avant-garde art savvy into his visual imagery. A dozen original lithographed posters, mostly from the ‘20s and ‘30s, offer glimpses of his memorable campaigns for the French railroad system, Dubonnet aperitif, cruise ships and European tourist destinations.

Cassandre’s suave, economical imagery incorporated influences from Cubism (train and landscape views fractured into a thin, curving white line, curved bits of pebble-patterned gray wheel and undulating hints of snow-capped mountains for a “Nord Express” poster) and Surrealism (a mysterious red glowing ball looming out of a dark blue sky--the station light--that captured the nocturnal adventure of traveling on the Wagon Lits).

But artiness was not allowed to get in the way of the message. Even in “L’Oiseau Bleu,” with soft white steam surrounding a swooning Matisse bluebird near a red-and-white checkerboard railroad station sign, the romance of the rails is clearly the central theme. A selection of posters by other designers of the era from a clutch of different countries shows why Cassandre was such a clever fellow. No one else combined the conceptual vigor, the unexpected point of view, the economical use of line and color and the sparkling clarity of one of the all-time masters of commercial art. (Turner Dailey Gallery, 7220 Beverly Blvd., to Feb. 4.)