We French Workers Warn You/Defeat Means Slavery Starvation Death
Artist
Ben Shahn
United States, 1898 - 1969
Date1942
Dimensions28 1/4 x 39 1/2 in. (71.8 x 100.3 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.255
DescriptionBen Shahn’s original painting for this image is in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain and was his first design for the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II. Shahn had made paintings for the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s and in 1935 began work as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. This design, like the other posters he produced for the OWI and various government agencies during the war, is characterized by the Social Realist style and progressive perspective of his earlier images. Shahn’s commitment to union causes and issues of social justice must be seen in the context of a new concern about the fate of American workers during the New Deal era and a proliferation of representations of them in the visual and performing arts. In this poster, designed in his typically robust, figurative style with strong outlines and bright planes of color, he shows a group of French workers raising their hands (enlarged to represent manual labor) in surrender in front of the official decree issued by the collaborationist Vichy government on September 4, 1942; this subjected French workers to compulsory labor for the war industry of the German occupiers. Here, the workers warn their American counterparts and allies of the dire consequences of defeat at the hands of Hitler and his Vichy associates.On View
Not on view
