mono

In a vast country, where relatively few people have had access to radio, television, and newspapers, propaganda posters have played a fundamental role as an effective means of mass communication between the Party and its People. To this day, they continue to reflect and shape the view on China's past, present, and future.

Dr. Stefan R. Landsberger, a sinologist and lecturer in contemporary Chinese History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, started to collect Chinese propaganda posters in the 1970s, and his collection has now grown into one of the largest private collections in the world. The posters, representing many different artists and styles, spanning over several decades of Chinese history, have formed the basis for his research on contemporary Chinese developments:

So-called propaganda art has played a major supporting role in the many campaigns that were designed to mobilize the people, and throughout the People's Republic, the propaganda poster has been the favored vehicle through which art conveyed model behavior.

His online collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters is a comprehensive and well-organized treasure. The posters are not only artistically interesting, but Stefan's informative and well-researched commentary set them into political and historical context. Ranging in time from 1949 to the present, some recent themes include the Chinese Space Program and SARS.

Picking just one poster to display here was extremely difficult.

Via Pacific Tides