The Great European War/Garros
Artist
Designer Unknown
Date1915
Dimensions22 1/2 x 15 1/4 in. (57.2 x 38.7 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.550
DescriptionThis is a Russian lubok poster published in 1915. Lubki, combining hand-colored folkloric, secular, and literary images with text, became widely popular by the end of the 17th century; they often conveyed moral and religious messages and informed the peasantry about social issues and current events. By the end of the 19th century, they had begun to inspire professional artists and during World War I, provided Russians of all classes with details of military developments as well as serving morale-boosting and propaganda functions. It shows a French plane, purportedly that of the French fighter pilot Roland Garros, flying into a German airship, an event described at length in the caption below the image. While Garros was a genuine aviation hero, the first pilot to cross the Mediterranean in 1913 and the developer of a revolutionary single-seat fighter plane equipped with an on-board machine gun early in World War I, the event illustrated here never actually happened. Garros spent nearly three years in a German prisoner of war camp after being captured in April 1915. He escaped and rejoined the French air force before being shot down and killed on October 5, 1918. The simple, colorful illustrational style of this narrative scene with text points to the origins of the lubok poster in woodcut broadsides of the 17th century. On View
Not on view
