Klein, Original TWA Poster, India, Sacred Elephant, Plane, Tourism Aviation 1960

David Klein was an immensely prolific travel posterist who worked primarily for TWA and produced dozens of posters for the now-defunct global carrier. He designed several different series for TWA, ranging from early work that was realistic to later work that was cartoon-like in style. David Klein was born in El Paso, Texas in February of 1918. He moved to California where he attended the Art Center School [later renamed the Art Center College of Design] in Los Angeles. During the 1930s, he was an active member of the California Watercolor Society. This group of artists often chose to paint watercolors depicting scenes of everyday life in the cities and suburbs of California. They painted directly with little or no preliminary pencil drawings and used paper as a ‘color’ in a new and creative way.