Rainbow
Untitled, 1969
Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South. This design adapts a photograph of Argentinian radical Ernesto (‘Che’) Guevara by Alberto Korda. The photograph was used as the basis of several OSPAAAL poster designs.
FOR A VIETNAM TEN TIMES MORE BEAUTIFUL, 1980
Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South. President Hồ Chí Minh promised that a country “ten times more beautiful” would be rebuilt after the destruction caused by the war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, allied with the U.S.A. (known as the ‘Vietnam War’ and ‘War Against the Americans to Save the Nation’).. This posthumous portrait of the leader pictures Vietnamese citizens in the socialist realist style used in propaganda posters from the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China.
Content warning: weaponry
Day of Solidarity with the People of GUATEMALA, 1977
Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South. For this poster, Alberto Blanco González used a photograph of Luis Augusto Turcios Lima taken at the 1966 Tricontinental conference. The 24-year-old was killed in a car accident later that year, but was remembered as a leader of the guerrilla group, the Rebel Armed Forces during the Guatemalan Civil War. Rather than creating formal portraits, many of OSPAAAL’s designers took inspiration from pop art and commercial advertising in their representations of political figures.
FOR THE PEACEFUL AND INDEPENDENT REUNIFICATION OF KOREA, 1969
Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South. This poster advocates for the reunification of the Republic of Korea (known as South Korea), represented by the child on the left, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (known as North Korea) represented by the child on the right. During the 1960s, the governments of Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea formed close ties based on a shared opposition to the U.S.A. OSPAAAL’s designers regularly used adapted photographs from the organisation’s news desk. Photographs were sometimes used out of context, with the same photographs appearing in posters and magazine illustrations to represent different themes. The identity of the children in this photograph is not known.
