Aug 06, 2008 - Sale 2152

Sale 2152 - Lot 106

Price Realized: $ 570
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
BEN SHAHN (1898-1969) WE FRENCH WORKERS WARN YOU. 1942.
28 1/8x39 1/2 inches, 100x71 1/2 cm. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washi
Condition B+: sharp vertical and horizontal folds. Paper. Framed.
Workers with their hands in the air are being rounded up in front of a brick wall bearing an official decree from the Vichy government. This, the first of Shahn's war posters, was a message to the working men of America to keep up the fight and to avoid the fate of their French counterparts. It was designed in accordance with Shahn's convictions on the nature of a war poster: "It must be neither tricky nor smart . . . the objective is too serious for smartness. It has to have dignity, grimness, urgency . . . It has to be unblinkingly serious." (Prescott p. 122). Prescott p. 122, Judd C. 17, Weill 504.