One of my favorite all-time movie poster artists is the Argentinean illustrator, Osvaldo Venturi — who I didn’t even know existed until a year and a half ago when I stumbled upon his work in The Art of The Modern Movie Poster from The Posteritati Gallery in NYC.

Venturi’s elegant posters from the 1940s and 19450s are more like paintings than one sheets, filled with vivid, swirling bursts of color and large dramatic faces of movie stars (perhaps he was the one who invented the notorious “floating heads“).

The price ranges for these beauties are all over the map from thousands of dollars on eBay to just a couple ten spots on EMoviePoster if you get lucky. So, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, “if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”