Vintage Poster Archives
Sem Pour la Liberté du Monde 1917 | WW1 Propaganda Poster
Sem Pour la Liberté du Monde 1917 | WW1 Propaganda Poster
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The Statue of Liberty rises from a still, teal sea, her torch held aloft against a sky of amber and pale aquamarine. Georges Goursat (1863–1934), signing as Sem, set her at the horizon, half-submerged, with her terracotta-rose form reflected in the water below. No coastline, no ships. The text at the foot, 'Pour la Liberté du Monde. Souscrivez à l'Emprunt National à la Banque Nationale de Crédit', is the only direct appeal in the composition.
Designed in 1917, the year the United States entered the First World War, and printed by Imprimerie Devambez in Paris, this is a war-bond propaganda poster commissioned by the Banque Nationale de Crédit. For French audiences, the Statue of Liberty carried a particular charge: she was La Liberté éclairant le monde, a gift from France to America in 1886, now returning as an ally. Sem's design turns that symbolism into atmosphere rather than argument. The poster is held in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Sem brought to this commission the lithographic colour gradation that defined his Belle Époque work: the sky's graduated warmth, the green cast of the water, the atmospheric tonal modelling of the statue's surface, all are the product of stone-lithography technique refined across three decades of Parisian print culture. The result is a WW1 propaganda poster that achieves its effect through stillness and light, not urgency.
This giclée reproduction is printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks, reproduced from the 1917 original lithograph. A natural choice for those interested in the history of WW1 visual communication, Belle Époque printmaking, or the Franco-American relationship expressed through graphic design.
