Original Roland Garros Poster Arroyo 1981

Artist Eduardo Arroyo Year 1981 Event Roland Garros 1981 — Fédération Française de Tennis, Paris Reference Listed in Arroyo's catalogue raisonné Size 57 × 75 cm (22.5 × 29.5 in) Type Original vintage lithographic tournament poster Backing Freshly linen backed Condition B+ — Overall Good, minor soiling and repaired pinholes in corners, see pictures This is an original lithographic poster created in 1981 by Eduardo Arroyo for the Roland Garros tournament — one of the most celebrated commissions in the history of the French Open's visual identity, and the image that defined an era. The composition is immediately recognisable: a tennis player seen from behind, his blonde hair and iconic headband unmistakably evoking Björn Borg — the Swedish champion who had dominated clay court tennis throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning Roland Garros six times between 1974 and 1981. The image is both portrait and archetype: a back turned to the spectator, a figure of solitary mastery facing the court. Eduardo Arroyo (1937–2018), born in Madrid and exiled to Paris at the age of twenty to escape Franco's regime, was one of the defining figures of the Figuration Narrative — the European movement that reclaimed figurative painting as a vehicle for political and cultural critique at a time when abstraction dominated the international art world. His work is held in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, and institutions across Europe. He received Spain's Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1982 — the same year he created the poster for the Davis Cup final between France and the United States. His canvases, characterised by flat planes of intense colour, sharp outlines and a deadpan irony, brought the visual language of caricature and popular culture into the domain of high painting with a rigour that was entirely his own. The Roland Garros commission allowed Arroyo to bring his graphic sensibility to one of France's great popular spectacles. The result is a poster that works simultaneously as sport, portraiture and cultural document — a frozen moment of athletic solitude that captures something essential about the game, the player, and the era. The poster has been freshly linen backed — the gold standard of vintage poster conservation — with minor soiling and repaired pinholes in the corners. See pictures for full condition details. A collector's piece at the intersection of art and sport — Arroyo's most iconic commission, Borg's most iconic era, Roland Garros at its most mythological.