Vintage Poster Archives
Jean Carlu Emprunt National 1930 | French Propaganda Poster
Jean Carlu Emprunt National 1930 | French Propaganda Poster
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A robed Marianne figure extends her arm across a saturated cobalt blue field, holding a circular shield from which a hand offers banknotes. Below her stand a silhouetted farmer at the plough, a dark-red ox, and a row of black factory chimneys, all gathered under the bold sans-serif headline 'EMPRUNT NATIONAL' on a red band. The upper register, in spaced white roman type, reads 'POUR LA RENAISSANCE ÉCONOMIQUE DANS LA PAIX'. Agriculture, industry, and civic allegory are compressed into a single horizontal composition of notable graphic clarity.
Designed by Jean Carlu (1900–1997) in 1930 for the French government's national loan campaign and printed by Lucien Serre & Cie., Paris. Carlu had co-founded the Union des Artistes Modernes with Cassandre and Paul Colin in 1925, and by 1930 he was one of the defining voices of French Art Deco graphic design. The poster asked holders of gold and treasury bonds to reinvest in France's post-war economic recovery, framing that financial act as a matter of national civic solidarity through Carlu's characteristically spare allegorical language.
This work belongs to the interwar sequence that preceded Carlu's wartime move to the United States, where he later designed for the Office of War Information. As a French government commission in the Art Deco period, it represents the moment when the French state consistently turned to the country's foremost poster artists for its public communications.
Reproduced as a fine art archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, using pigment-based inks for colour fidelity across the cobalt blues and deep reds of the original lithograph.
