?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
TOMI UNGERER (1931 - ) KISS FOR PEACE. 1967. 191/2x27 inches. Condition B+: repaired tears and creases in margins. Matted and framed. Tomi Ungerer was born in Strasbourg and emigrated to America in 1956. He lived in New York for 13 years, then he moved to Canada, and finally settled in Ireland. Ungerer has worked in just about every medium available to graphic designers. He has designed posters, illustrated numerous books for adults and children, and produced sculptures and other object d'art. His limitless imagination and creativity take his work from the gentlest images for children to the most violently satirical style. During his time in the U.S., he was an activist for many human rights issues, including opposition to racism (see Swann Modernist Poster catalogue #1897, lot 109) and the war in Vietnam (ibid, lot 110). Many of his strongest posters were widely distributed by Unicorn Press, a company he founded with his friend Richard Kosak. These images had an important impact on the public (so much so that Ungerer had to flee to Canada in 1971). This image, as with many of his others, is an unsettling balance of humor and outrage, in which a soldier is forcing a Vietnamese person to perform profane acts upon the personification of one of America's greatest monuments. Ungerer p. 20, Ungerer / Strasbourg p. 172.
