by Jack Garner - from Rochester Democrat & Chronicle
(July 20, 2007) — The late Rochester artist Batiste Madalena is the star of Now Playing: Hand Painted Poster Art from the 1910s through the 1950s, a finely crafted new coffee table book about beautiful art designed to sell movies in the Golden Age and before.
As a young and talented artist, Madalena was commissioned by George Eastman himself to paint posters for films coming to the Eastman Theatre when it was an elegant movie house between 1924 and 1928. Altogether, he painted 1,400 posters. Eastman told Madalena just to be sure passers-by could read the titles from the street. Fortunately, Madalena did far more than that. He created memorable art with his pitches for films with Lon Chaney, Valentino, Greta Garbo and more.