JOHN HEARTFIELD (1891-1968) 5 FINGER HAT DIE HAND. Circa 1970. 38x27 inches. Condition B: minor restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; overpainting in corners; restoration in image. This particular poster is one of the most powerful political icons to emerge out of Europe in the late 1920s. The image originally appeared on the cover of Die Rote Fahne (another political magazine Heartfield worked for) on May 13, 1928. It appeared later that year as a full-size poster. Promoting "List Five" the Communist ballot in the upcoming elections. "The number 5 of the communist electoral list is burned by all possible means into the consciousness of those to whom the poster is addressed. It is shouted by the number 5 and represented by the word five and the open palm" (Heartfield p. 294). This poster appeared in multiple copies in a room decorated by Heartfield at the 1929 Stuttgart Film und Foto exhibition. As such an iconic image this poster was reproduced several times, both in West and East Germany. The original 1928 poster was printed using the rotogravure process, and all subsequent reprints were printed via the offset method . In 1977 the Elefanten Press Galerie in Berlin, reproduced several of Heartfield's posters in the original size. A few years earlier another Berlin printing house Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst also reprinted the image in the original size. However, we believe this to be a copy printed by the Central Antiquariat DDR, in Leipzig, 1974, as part of a portfolio entitled Plakatkunst im Klassenkampf 1924-1932. Even these reproductions have become impossible to find, never appearing on the market. Heartfield cat. no. 134, Weill p. 164, no. 271, Berman p. 167 pl. 99, Rademacher p. 100.
