Vintage Poster Archives
New Zealand Fights 1942 | A.T. Peel WW2 Poster
New Zealand Fights 1942 | A.T. Peel WW2 Poster
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A prone ANZAC soldier in khaki, shoulder flash reading 'NEW ZEALAND', leans into a bipod-mounted light machine gun against a flat cobalt blue ground. Orange skin tones and dark navy shadows reduce the figure to its essentials: a man, a weapon, a steady aim. Two words of bold slab-serif type sit above; one word below. The composition holds.
Designed by A.T. Peel and published by the New Zealand Legation in Washington D.C. in 1942, this poster belongs to a series produced to establish New Zealand's presence in the Allied cause for American audiences. The soldier is consistent with ANZAC forces operating in North Africa that year, where New Zealand's 2nd Division fought through the Western Desert campaign alongside British and Commonwealth forces. The poster makes no appeal for money or recruits. It states a fact, flatly: New Zealand fights. The assertion is carried by the design rather than the text.
The poster is held in the collection of Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of New Zealand, and is documented in the National Library of New Zealand. It represents the flat-graphic Allied wartime communication style of the early 1940s: a reduced palette, simplified volumes, and type that carries weight across a room.
Reproduced from a high-quality archival source as a fine art archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. Supplied unframed, rolled in a protective tube. Multiple sizes available.
