Kassner, Alois | The most important European stage illusionist of the first half of the twentieth century

Kassner, Alois 

Kassner Illusionen. Hamburg: Lith Adolph Friedlander, [1927] (nos. 8258, 8259)

2 color lithograph posters (each 35 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.; 902 x 317 mm). Light fold creases, small area of surface abrasion to first. Uniformly matted, framed, and glazed with Plexiglas. 

A striking pair of posters for the German stage illusionist Alois Kassner: the first depicting Kassner performing a levitation, the second showing him firing an assistant from a cannon into a suspended, sealed box. Kassner's huge stage show, which employed up to twenty assistants, incorporated the apparatus he acquired after the retirement of Chevalier Ernest Thorn. The size of his show—said to require sixteen railroad cars to transport—likely precluded him from touring in the United States, but Kassner was the most significant magician performing in Europe between the world wars.

REFERENCE:

cf. Magic, p. 266, passim