1:35 Italian WWII Propaganda Posters - 86 posters

Paper propaganda from the streets of Italy

Eighty-six poster designs reduced to 1:35 capture the time when the regime turned the walls of Italian cities into a permanent pictorial campaign. Alongside recruiting appeals for the army and the air force there are slogans about victory, appeals for metal collections for arms production and scenes from the campaign in North Africa. The end of the period covered is represented by prints from the short existence of the Italian Social Republic.

In a scene a pasted-up sheet fills a role that no casting can take over: it tells the viewer where and when the scene takes place. Paper on peeling plaster, on wooden boarding or on a street lighting post moves a build from a generic European street into a specific Italy of the war years.

• A total of 86 designs on printed sheets for 1:35
• Domestic propaganda, recruitment and wartime collections
• Suitable for plaster, wood, sheet metal and signboards
• The carrier is paper, not a releasable film

The designs are cut out with a sharp scalpel along a ruler, so that the edges stay straight. They are glued with thinly diluted PVA glue, which does not ripple the paper more than is desirable for the effect. A rippled, torn or partly overpasted poster looks more credible than a precisely offered-up rectangle. The shade of the print can be blended with the rest of the scene once dry by a gentle pass with dry pigment.

The artistic character of the selection is interesting in itself. Italian graphic work of the day rested on striking lettering and sharp areas of color, which reads well even after reduction. The recognizable character of the printed matter therefore stays on a finished scene, even if the individual words can no longer be read from an ordinary distance.