?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
BEN SHAHN (1898-1969)
FOR ALL THESE RIGHTS WE'VE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT / REGISTER - VOTE. 1946.
29x38 3/4 inches, 73 3/4x96 1/2 cm. L.I.P. & B.A., New York. Condition A-: minor creases and abrasions in margins and image and along unobtrusive vertical and horizontal folds.
In 1943, the Council of Industrial Organizations created the Political Action Committee in order to "protect the political rights of the working man, the returning service man, the farmer, and the small-business man" (Prescott p. 124). In 1944, the PAC worked towards registering union voters with an eye to the national elections of that year. In his posters, Shahn primarily appealed to farmers and factory workers, playing to their fears of hunger, unemployment, inflation and war. According to Shahn's wife Bernarda, the title of this poster was taken from a speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and here "this demonstration of union activity . . . is coupled with the exhortative message REGISTER - VOTE, which is repeated on all the CIO posters of this series" (Prescott p. 131). Prescott 155, Images of an Era 4, Takashimaya 235.
