Artist · 22 prints
Albert Robida Prints
About Albert Robida
Albert Robida (1848–1926) was a French illustrator, caricaturist and writer, born in Compiègne and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He trained to become a notary, a kind of legal clerk, but much preferred drawing, and by the mid-1860s he was working as a cartoonist for Paris humour magazines. In 1880 he co-founded the satirical weekly La Caricature, which he edited for about twelve years.
Albert Robida is best remembered for his playful, uncannily accurate pictures of the future. In books such as Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century, 1883), La Guerre au vingtième siècle (War in the Twentieth Century, 1887) and La Vie électrique (The Electric Life, 1890), he drew a world of flying cars, aerial warfare and the "telephonoscope", a flat screen that brings news and plays into the home. He wrote and illustrated these stories himself, using the gadgets to poke fun at modern city life. His witty, crowded drawings make the future look both thrilling and slightly ridiculous.
Albert Robida prints: reproductions of the French illustrator's drawings of an imagined future, most of them from 1893, along with a satirical map from 1882. The collection includes Quelques échantillons de la flotte aérienne, Les tubes (vue prise en aéronef à 700 mètres), Sur les hauteurs de Passy, Le phare de Lauterbrunnen and Aerial house.
This selection concentrates on his futuristic Paris: airships and flying boats over rooftops, aerial houses, underwater warships and pneumatic tubes, along with weddings, holidays and crowded streets in a mechanised city. A few plates turn to fairy-tale subjects such as an alchemist's laboratory and an enchanted tower. The drawings are detailed and humorous, with small figures throughout.
The light, playful scenes suit studies, home offices, children's rooms and hallways, and the series hangs well as a group of small frames. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
