?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
POUR LES DISARMAMENT. 1932. 61x45 1/2 inches. H. Chachoin, Paris. Condition B+: restoration and slight darkening along vertical and horizontal folds. In 1932 Carlu founded the Office de Propagande pour la Paix<>, a non-profit agency dedicated to preserving peace in Europe. This was the first poster he produced for this organization (from a photograph taken by Andre Vigneau) and remained one of the best. As Carlu stated himself in interviews, he created the image using the basic structures of cubism: the sphere, the triangle and the square. The sharp triangle represents the path of the falling bombs (a shape which is echoed in the photograph of the child), and the sphere is the world threatened by war. To add to the drama Carlu uses photography which, as he said, in its crude realism adds to the drama. He was in fact one of the first to use and to fight for the use of photographs in posters. Originally this image was intended to be shown at the U.A.M. (Union des Artistes Modernes) exhibition held on February 4, 1932, at the Art Decorative Museum in Paris. However, the president of the museum, who was already shocked by the photographic work of The Stenberg Brothers and El Lissitzky (who had been invited to participate in the show) decided to censor Carlu's poster, and he withdrew it from the show. The resulting scandal was so tumultuous that the director re-inserted the poster into the show only two days later. A final historical note: the woman in the photomontage was Hemmingway's first wife. ref: Muller-Brockman / Wobman<>, AT Verlag, Aarau, Stuttgart, 1989, p. 21.
