Vintage Poster Archives
Jean Carlu America's Answer 1942 | American Propaganda Poster
Jean Carlu America's Answer 1942 | American Propaganda Poster
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A black-gloved industrial hand grips a wrench against a bare cream ground, the knuckles modelled in yellow-ochre, the jaw of the spanner turning directly into the letter 'O' of PRODUCTION. The word runs in full-width cadmium red across the lower third of the composition. Above the sleeve, angled in italic blue script: 'America's answer!' The entire argument for wartime industrial output is reduced to one visual gesture.
Designed in 1942 by Jean Carlu (1900–1997) for the Division of Information, Office for Emergency Management, Washington D.C. Carlu was a French emigre who had come to the United States to organise the French pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair and remained after Paris fell to German occupation. He brought to American wartime communication the same modernist economy of form he had refined in pre-war Paris alongside Cassandre and Paul Colin. This poster won the New York Art Directors Medal and was voted poster of the year; it was distributed to factories across the United States as part of the industrial mobilisation drive. The wrench-as-letterform conceit, clean, legible, devoid of rhetoric, is among the most cited examples of modernist wartime graphic design.
The poster carries the plate signature 'JEAN CARLU' in the lower left and the Great Seal eagle device with 'DIVISION OF INFORMATION / OFFICE FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT / WASHINGTON D.C.' in the lower right. Printed by offset lithograph, likely by a New York trade printer under government contract.
Reproduced as an archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. Resonates with collectors of American modernist design and anyone interested in the graphic history of the Second World War.
