THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1926), original movie poster artwork by Karoly Grosz.

THE MIDNIGHT SUN (1926), original movie poster art by Karoly Grosz.

This is one of his first artworks for Universal Pictures, since he began working at Universal's art department in New York in the mid-1920s, and was influenced by a range of movements spanning Expressionism to Art Deco.
His creations were considered novel for the time because the designs emphasized an "idea" or visual theme, rather than literal depictions of scenes that a viewer could expect to see in the movie.

In this artwork for the premiere of THE MIDNIGHT SUN to showcase the Universal star of the moment, Laura La Plante, Grosz uses his favorite colors, red and black on a white background, three-tone combination that he repeated five years later to create some of the most iconic posters in history, as FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932).