E.R.P./Pour Se Soulever et Vivre Mieux
Artist
Alfredo Lalia
Printer
Mouton Cy, The Hague
Netherlands
Date1950
Dimensions26 1/4 x 18 3/4 in. (66.7 x 47.6 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.126
DescriptionThe poster promotes the European Recovery Plan, an American initiative to help rebuild the infrastructure and economies of European countries devastated by World War II. It is more commonly known as the Marshall Plan after its propagator, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and was put into effect between April 3, 1948 and June 30, 1952. “Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, desperation, poverty, chaos,” he had stated in a speech at Harvard in 1947. The poster was one of 25 finalists in the Intra-European Cooperation for a Better Standard of Living Poster Contest held throughout Europe in the fall of 1950, in which more than ten thousand posters on the theme of cooperation and economic recovery were submitted. Alfredo Lalia’s starkly modern image shows a large pulley lettered ERP through which pass steel cables labeled with various European flags; Lalia already had an established career, mainly as a designer of billboard advertisements for department stores before the war, and producing military propaganda during it. He went on to design numerous posters for the Italian Tourist Board, among other Italian organizations.On View
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