Best Motorcycle Posters and Art Prints

Motorcycle posters provide an inexpensive way to decorate your den, shop or garage. Bring back memories and keep dreams alive with your favorite posters and art prints.

Without a doubt, the single most famous motorcycle poster would have to be from the movie Easy Rider. Captain America and Billy cruise across the southwestern United States searching for America.

My absolute personal favorite motorcycle poster however is not a photograph at all but an art print. Austrian artist Paul Gassenheimer combined three American icons in a single dreamlike poster, Speedbound. James Dean pilots a Harley Davidson with an affectionate Marilyn Monroe clinging to him. To me it best typifies the American Motorcycle Dream.

James Dean never actually met Marilyn Monroe, unless possibly at a big movie premier along with dozens of other celebrities. Also, James Dean's personal motorcycle was a Triumph. But do not let minor facts like these interrupt your pleasure in this great drawing.

The Wild One is not a good motorcycle movie, but it is the most significant. The poster is important because it memorializes an American motorcycle icon. It started the genre of biker movies and reinforced the image of biker gangs first sensationalized by Life magazine after a rally in Hollister, California.

Now some of you may argue that The Great Escape was not a motorcycle movie, but a World War II movie about POWs, which of course is true. What makes it significant to old motorcyclists like me is that the cast included Steve McQueen, one of my favorite actors. McQueen was an avid motorcyclist and not only did his own riding and jumping in the film but even played the part of some of the German motorcycle troops chasing him.