Vintage Poster Archives
Cieslewicz CCCP USA 1968 | Cold War Propaganda Poster
Cieslewicz CCCP USA 1968 | Cold War Propaganda Poster
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Two superhero figures in blue costumes and red capes fly forward in perfect bilateral symmetry against a flat cadmium yellow ground. One chest reads CCCP in white block letters; the other reads USA. The composition is their exact mirror: same body, same fists, same cape angle, same forward momentum. The only difference is the acronym. That symmetry is the argument.
Designed by Roman Cieslewicz (1930–1996) for the cover of Opus International in 1968, published by Georges Fall, Paris. Cieslewicz was simultaneously art director of Elle and artistic creator of Opus International from 1967 to 1969, one of the most concentrated and productive periods of his career. Born in Lwów in 1930 and trained at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, he arrived in Paris in 1963 carrying the formal rigour of the Polish Poster School. This composition appropriates American comic-book iconography to assert the moral equivalence of the two Cold War superpowers, a position central to the European left in 1968. The poster was acquired by the Centre Pompidou in 1991 and exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Cold War Modern: Design 1945–70 retrospective in 2008.
The graphic logic is deliberately flat and bold: primary-field yellow, blocked blue, hard black outlines, white type. No gradients, no depth, no hierarchy between the two figures. The technique mirrors the argument. Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks, preserving the saturated, ink-dense palette of the 1968 Serg-printed screen print.
A natural fit for collections focused on Cold War political design, post-1960s graphic history, or the work of Cieslewicz and the Polish Poster School in Paris.
