Posters

Print workshop sponsored by the Royal Chicano Air Force. Two men working a print and one watching

Royal Chicano Airforce print workshop, 1978.

Overview

Cheap to produce and easy to distribute, posters were an ideal medium for community organizing.  Like Mexican printers and collectives such as José Guadalupe Posada Links to an external site. and Taller de Gráfica Popular Links to an external site., artists coming of age during the Chicano movement produced posters with bold colors and images that affirmed cultural identity and connected political causes to a longer history.  Art historian Terezita Romo notes that artists played a central role in the movement by "pictorializing the struggle" and working in collectives or Centros to share ink, paper, and equipment to produce posters for community causes (75). Artist collectives such as the Centro de Artistas Chicanos, founded by the Royal Chicano Air Force Links to an external site. in Sacramento in 1972, produced thousands of posters for community events and political actions. 

The first poster, "Una sola unión:  Vote UFW," uses the image of a campesina carrying a UFW flag to advocate for the UFW as the only union representing farm workers. The second, "Solidaridad con la unión de campesinos," shows a campesino carrying a flag of a stylized black bird, wearing UFW hat, and staring directly at the viewer.

Questions

  • How effective do you think these posters are at conveying a pro-union, pro-UFW message?  What about the images and the colors makes them effective or ineffective?
  • Which audiences might the two posters be trying to reach? Where do you think these posters might be displayed?

Poster of a female farm worker holding a UFW flag with the words "una sola union" and "vote UFW."

 

Poster of a male farm workers holding a stylized UFW flag with the words "solidaridad con la union de campesinos."

 

 

"Concilio de Arte Popular Links to an external site.." 1978.  Royal Chicano Air Force Archives Links to an external site..  Calisphere. Special Research Collections, University of California Santa Barbara.

"Una sola unión: Vote UFW." El Taller Grafico,  Labor Archives Research Center, San Francisco State University.

Orosco, Juanishi. "Solidaridad con la union de campesinos."  Royal Chicano Air Force.   Labor Archives Research Center, San Francisco State University.

Romo, Terezita. "Aesthetics of the Message:  Chicana/o Posters, 1965-1987." Carmen E. Ramos et al editors. ¡Printing the Revolution! : The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now. Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2020.

Royal Chicano Air Force Archives Links to an external site..  Calisphere. Special Research Collections, University of California Santa Santa Barbara.