?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
LESTER BEALL (1903-1969) FARM WORK / RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION. 1937. 39 1/2x29 3/4 inches, 100x75 1/2 cm. Condition B+: repaired tears and overpainting in image; minor restoration in corners. Silk-screen. In the 1930s, after a traditional education in Chicago, Lester Beall became interested in avant-garde typography and in Bauhaus design elements. In 1937, he was the first American designer to have a one man show at the Museum of Modern Art, and in the same year was one of the first designers commissioned by the U.S. Government to help promote the Rural Electrification Administration. The posters he created in this first series for the REA. (including Wash Day, Running Water, Radio, Heat-Cold and Light) pitched modern amenities to the hinterlands of America, where many such "luxuries" were virtually unknown. Here, Beall employs the red, white and blue pictographic manner that was the style of the entire first series (except for Wash Day, which is blue and yellow). The image clearly and effectively shows how electricity is brought from power lines down to the farm where the machines are powered. One of the rarest images from the 1937 series. Modern American 40.
