[MAY 68]. "Light wages - heavy tanks" - Olive green silkscre - Lot 198

Please take into account the specific conditions of this sale:

🚚 Librairie Galerie des éléphants offers shipping for this ONLINE sale. We will send the lots by registered mail in tubes for a flat rate of 40 euros in Belgium, 50 euros in Europe and 70 euros outside Europe. Several lots can be sent for the same corresponding amount. This amount will be added to your auction slip.

✅ The lot will be sold to the highest and last bidder.

The sale features a selection of original exhibition posters as well as a selection of original posters from the period of the May 1968 events in France.

May 68 represents an earthquake in the political and social history of France in the 20th century, a gigantic event, a date defining a before and an after. And yet, there is very little material evidence of this popular upsurge. A few films and photos, prints from newspapers of the period and posters, fragile, ephemeral and printed day by day. Many of these posters were printed by the Atelier de l'école des Beaux-Arts, renamed Ex-École de Beaux-Arts on May 14, 1968. The name appears on posters produced by the school's workshops. Workshops were also set up at the Arts-Déco, in universities in several major French cities and, at the end of May, in striking factories. Students were inspired by the dazibaos, or wall newspapers, of the 1966 Chinese Cultural Revolution. The posters closest to this spirit are those composed entirely of text, a fine selection of which we are presenting in this sale. A study of the corpus as a whole reveals that most posters are a direct response to a political event or announcement that students follow non-stop on the radio. This study made it possible to construct a chronology for the very short period of their production, from May 15 to June 27. The posters reflect the students' and workers' thirst for communication, their emotions and their convictions. The texts and illustrations are discussed at length each morning at the General Assembly, before the students produce the silk-screen prints in their workshops. They use "mandrel tails", i.e. the ends of paper rolls from rotary presses. Their printing technique allows them to produce only small formats. These contrast with the large-format political and commercial posters, giving a visual identity of their own to the words of the students and strikers. The preferred color was red, but the shortage of raw materials meant that other colors were also used. The posters were brought together by two collectors, the first having lived through the events of May '68 as a student, and the second a discerning art lover.