{"product_id":"speed-the-day-war-bonds-hirsch-1943","title":"Speed the Day War Bonds 1943 | Joseph Hirsch WW2 Poster","description":"\u003cp\u003eA grinning GI stands at the centre of an imagined victory parade, rifle thrust skyward, a depicted Nazi steel helmet hung around his neck on its chinstrap. Confetti and streamers fill the blue-grey background; a goggled airman flanks him on the left, a second figure peers out from inside a tank turret on the right. The low-angle composition makes the soldier rise monumental above the viewer, rendered in the warm, slightly caricatured Social Realist style that Joseph Hirsch refined across a career spent painting ordinary Americans in extraordinary circumstances.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHirsch (1910–1981) painted this in 1943 for Abbott Laboratories, as part of the company's contribution to the U.S. Treasury's War Finance Program. Abbott recruited more than two dozen established American artists, working through the Associated American Artists gallery in New York, and deployed them both as war correspondents on active fronts and as contributors to the home-front bond campaign. Hirsch himself went to the South Pacific, North Africa, and Italy in 1943 and 1944, producing around seventy-five paintings and drawings as a pictorial war correspondent. The Abbott bond posters, including this one, were distributed to schools, libraries, and public buildings across the country as part of the Treasury's Schools-at-War programme.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe victory-parade scene was a calculated choice: in 1943 the war's end was not yet in sight, and the image asked Americans to picture the celebration their bond purchases would help bring forward. The depicted German helmet, stamped with its swastika, hanging inert around the soldier's neck, carried a precise symbolic message about the expected outcome.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA considered addition to any collection focused on American Social Realism, WW2 graphic communication, or the design history of the U.S. home front. Reproduced from an archival source on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Vintage Poster Archives","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":64406565683577,"sku":"VPA-13888-A4","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A3","offer_id":64406565716345,"sku":"VPA-13888-A3","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2","offer_id":64406565749113,"sku":"VPA-13888-A2","price":34.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70cm","offer_id":64406565781881,"sku":"VPA-13888-50x70cm","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1","offer_id":64406565814649,"sku":"VPA-13888-A1","price":44.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100cm","offer_id":64406565847417,"sku":"VPA-13888-70x100cm","price":59.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0","offer_id":64406565880185,"sku":"VPA-13888-A0","price":69.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0994\/1139\/4937\/files\/Propaganda-SpeedTheDay-WarBonds-AbbottLaboratories-1943__VPA-13888.jpg?v=1787993589","url":"https:\/\/vintageposterarchives.com\/products\/speed-the-day-war-bonds-hirsch-1943","provider":"Vintage Poster Archives","version":"1.0","type":"link"}