The theme of the installation is the changing relationship between the poster as an artistic and creative medium and the role played in it by women. Male poster designers from the first heyday of German poster design, from 1905 to 1921 approximately, used woman as a theme and women as models in a variety of ways.
The show and the accompanying exhibition catalogue present a selection from the collections of F. W. Neess and Maximilian Karagöz, showing the diverse public portrayals of women on posters. Works skilfully communicated social ideas of the day on what women should be. They conveyed what behaviour was socially desirable, what freedoms were conceivable, but also which boundaries were non-negotiable.
However, in this time women also designed posters professionally, even when they had to do it in opposition to gender prejudices. Their designs showed the growing confidence of women to move away from one-off handicrafts and small formats to large-format, mass-produced advertisements. It could be said, therefore, that these women championed emancipation through poster design.