Save Serbia
Artist
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen
1859 - 1923
Date1916
Dimensions36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.94
DescriptionAllied organizations during World War I produced many posters soliciting donations for Serbian refugees after the defeat of the county (an ally of Britain, France, and Russia) by Austro-Hungarian and German forces between October and December 2015. To attract aid in this poster, artist Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen represents the very real plight of some of the seven hundred thousand surviving Serbian soldiers and civilians forced to flee across the mountains to Albania and Montenegro during the harsh winter. The same image features on a French poster published the same year commemorating the Journée Serbe (Serbia Day) on June 25. This English-language variant was issued by the Serbian Relief Committee that had been established in 1915 at 70 Fifth Avenue in New York. There was a similar Serbian Relief Fund based in London and La Nation Serbe en France (the Serbian Nation in France) in Paris; allied nations also sent funds and medical missions to Serbia, took in Serbian refugees and accepted a number of its students to their educational institutions. Steinlen, the Swiss-born painter and illustrator remains most celebrated for his avant-garde poster designs of the 1890s for Le Chat Noir cabaret and similar Parisian operations as well as for his illustrations for satirical journals like L’ Assiette du Buerre and Les Humouristes, and for his many images of cats.On View
Not on view
