Comment

The Arts and Culture program was organized by the Montréal 1976 Olympics Organizing Committee (COJO). Its goal was to create a Canadian festival that athletes and workers would partici­pate in as well as the visitors to the Games. Through this approach they hoped to fully integrate it into the Games, rather than it existing as a parallel attraction to the sporting program.

The program adopted a ‘stylized sheaf of wheat exploding in a riot of colours’ motif (designed by Raymond Bellemare and Pierre-Yves Pelletier) to represent the festival, and was used across marketing materials and communications, in conjunction with the rainbow bands from the official COJO colour palette. Purple represented folk dancing; red, theatre; orange, opera and operetta; yellow, music; green, representational arts; blue, entertainment; and lavender, ballet and modern dancing. While the sport-related communications use these bands in straight formation, or sometimes in diagonal chevron patterns, the Arts and Culture strand adopted a more expressive interpretation, whilst still retaining a connection to the fuller identity approach.

This poster was produced, together with a number of other official designs in advance of the games to raise awareness and build a sense of anticipation at home and abroad.

See more official Montréal Olympics posters

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