?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
LESTER BEALL (1903-1969) RADIO / RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION. 1937. 38 3/4x28 3/4 inches, 98 1/2x73 cm. Condition A. Silkscreen. Matted and framed. In the 1930s, after a traditional education in Chicago, Lester Beall became interested in avant-garde typography and in the design elements of the Bauhaus. He moved to New York in 1935, where he began an extraordinarily successful career as an art director. Not only did he create world-acclaimed logos and corporate identities for such companies as American International Paper, Merrill Lynch, Caterpillar, Martin Marieta and the New York Hilton, but working for the publisher McGraw-Hill, he redesigned 20 of their magazines. In 1937, he was the first American designer to have a one man show at the Museum of Modern Art. That same year, Beall was one of the first designers commissioned by the U.S. Government to help promote the Rural Electrification Administration. The six posters he created in this series for the R.E.A. pitched basic modern amenities to the hinter lands of America, where many such "luxuries" were virtually unknown. The R.E.A. existed not only to help rural America enter into the modern age but also served to create jobs for a Depression-ravaged country. Elevating visual communication to an extremely efficient level, Beall's style involves a technique close to the ideogram, employing clear and direct images, free from any exterior influences that would lessen the pure message. At a time when the majority of the American rural populace was largely illiterate, Beall's simple silkscreen, in patriotic red, white and blue, amply conveys the message of getting radio into every home with hardly any text at all, and has been referred to as "a benchmark in the history of graphic design" (Posters American Style, p. 126). Beall 105, Mechanical Age p. 155, Modernism 252b, Crouse p. 84, Design Graphique p. 83, Encyclopedie de l'Affiche p. 102, Modern American Poster 39, MoMA 218.1937.
