Mao for Palestine

[Carboni, Elisabetta]. Manifesto. Continuare la rivoluzione e andare sempre avanti.

[Rome], Comune comitato di cultura alternativa, [c. 1971].

Large rolled poster, 1400 x 485 mm. Clean screenprint in yellow ink on red coated paper, thin wooden stretchers to top and bottom.

 8,500.00

Rare poster in Italian and Chinese calling for the defeat of imperialism and American social-imperialism, featuring images of Mao and Zhou Enlai. A brash and brilliant piece of graphic design; a typical example of Carboni's visual style and her support for the Palestinian liberation movement. Besides the crowded pastiche of Chinese Republic iconography, exemplified by the two dragons entwined around upward-pointing rifles and the children happily wading upstream at centre, two symbols appear slightly out of place: namely the small maps of Africa and Palestine. The poster's iconography and Maoist phrases convey a distinctly anti-Zionist message, with Carboni drawing comparison between Mao's demands for the liberation of black peoples and the Palestinian struggle; both nations are subjugated by the yoke of American imperialism. Carboni produced a number of other pro-Palestine posters in the early 1970s, including two equally aggressive posters for the Comune. Carboni was evidently familiar with Mao's writings and the oft-repeated slogans of the CPC: the three big characters at the top declare this a "dazibao" poster, with the word "manifesto" superimposed on an AK-47. The other three dazibao-style slogans roughly translate as "long live Chairman Mao", "long live the people's/peasant's republic of China", and "the dictatorship of the proletariat". The Italian text consists of direct quotations from Mao: the intellectual youth must go from the city into the countryside; the young, the graduates of middle schools, high schools and universities must mobilize themselves, and the peasants will welcome them; all reactionaries are paper tigers, and appear more terrible than they really are; the black peoples must be liberated; strategically we must despise the enemy, but tactically we must take him seriously; fight egotism and criticise revisionism, etc. We have been able to locate only one other copy, in the Zurich Museum of Design.

A few minor creases to margins, some repairs to corners and margins of verso with white tape, some very minor chipping at centre, else very good.

Stock Code: BN#49415 Tags: , , ,