?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) OUR FRIEND. 1944. 30x39 3/4 inches, 76x101 cm. L.I.P. & B.A., New York. Condition A-: abrasions and losses at intersections of vertical and horizontal folds; creases in image; minor tears at edges. Paper. "This poster was used in the hotly contested 1944 campaign in support of Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth term. Shahn presented Roosevelt as a warmly sympathetic man whose visage looms father-like above the crowd " (Prescott p. 128). The poster is infused with pro-Democratic symbolism, including "buttons for the AFL and the CIO, hat tickets for the Grand Lodge and the National Farm Bureau, a soldier's hat, the hands of black and white races . . . a child symbolizing the nation's future . . . [and the good omen of] the blue sky above." (ibid) According to Shahn's wife, the little boy was actually their son, Jonathan. Prescott 151, Encyclopedie de l'Affiche p. 367.
