?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
VOJTECH PREISSIG (1873-1944) CZECHOSLOVAKS! JOIN OUR FREE COLORS! 1918. 35 3/4x25 inches, 90 3/4x63 1/2 cm. Wentworth Institute, Boston. Condition A / A-: minor creases and abrasions at edges; slight time-staining at lower left edge. Linocut. Paper. The most famous in a series of 16 color linoleum cuts produced by Preissig for the Wentworth Institute during the war, calling on Czechoslovaks living abroad to join the Czech legion fighting in Russia, France and Italy. The posters exist in different languages (Czech, Slovak and English) and formats (the images also appear on postcards). A Czech artist, Preissig studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague and worked with Alphonse Mucha in Paris between 1898 and 1903. In 1910, he came to America, where he taught at Columbia University and was the director of the School of Printing and Graphic Arts at the Wentworth Institute in Boston (whose initials are printed on the poster). The flags depicted in this poster represent the four regions which would, in 1918, comprise Czechoslovakia: Bohemia (the red lion); Moravia (the red and white checked eagle); Silesia (the black eagle); and Slovakia (with the Slovak double cross, similar to the French cross of Lorraine). The red, white and blue flag, with the stars in the middle, was the Resistance flag of the Czechoslovak Independence movement that Preissig had designed for the Czech Government while in Exile. It was supposed to become the Czech national flag, but was somehow overlooked in 1918 when Czechoslovakia was officially formed. Rawls p. 65, Darracott 38, Borkan p. 46, Theofiles 19, Rickards 78, Preissig p. 155 and 159 (both var).
