Vintage Poster Archives
WW2 Home Front 1944 | Schlaikjer Propaganda Poster
WW2 Home Front 1944 | Schlaikjer Propaganda Poster
Couldn't load pickup availability
A helmeted US Army infantryman holds an M1 Garand rifle, bayonet fixed, and looks out at the viewer with an unsettling directness. The face fills most of the picture plane, warm ochre tones worked in Schlaikjer's academic realist manner against a teal-green brushstroke background. Above in bold white lettering on dark navy: 'The battle-wise Infantryman...' Below, a full-width scarlet band closes the argument: '...is CAREFUL of what he says or writes. HOW ABOUT YOU?'
Designed by Jes Wilhelm Schlaikjer (1897–1982) and issued in 1944 by the US Adjutant-General's Office, Army Service Forces, distributed by the Office of War Information (GPO ref. 1944-O-602442). In 1942, Schlaikjer became the official War Department Artist, the only artist to hold that title during WW2, painting posters for recruitment, war bonds, the Signal Corps, the Marines, and the Women's Army Corps, as well as portraits of Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Patton now hanging in the National War College. This poster belongs to the American 'careless talk' campaign, the domestic security series that warned both civilians and service personnel against loose speech interceptable by enemy agents. Schlaikjer himself had served in the WW1 Signal Corps in France, making the confrontational gaze of this infantryman something more than an artistic convention.
The design is held in the collections of the UNT Libraries Government Documents Department, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. It was issued in two sizes: 40 x 28.4 in. and 27.9 x 20 in., listed in the 1944 Monthly Catalog of US Government Publications (p. 1329).
Reproduced from a high-resolution archival source as a giclée print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A natural fit for collections focused on American WW2 graphic history, wartime communication design, or the academic realist illustration tradition of the 1940s.
