Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Briefly describes the history of the WPA Federal Art Project, explains the silk skreen process, and shows a variety of FPA posters promoting health, travel, the theater, and the war effort.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Graphic artists of the Works Progress Administration produced thousands of bold, brightly colored, astutely modern posters. These WPA posters promoted health; encouraged vacationing in America; advertised art exhibits, concerts, and plays; and attacked America's World War II enemies. In Posters of the WPA , DeNoon makes the first serious attempt to present the neglected history of WPA posters. This informative book includes essays by Anthony Velonis and Richard Floethe and ends with color portfolios of posters by Velonis, Floethe, Bock, Halls, Milhous, and others. A welcome addition to the history of graphic design in the United States. Douglas G. Campbell, Warner Pacific Coll., Portland, Ore. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Little exists in the art historical literature regarding the graphic production of the Federal Arts Project (FAP) between 1935 and 1943. The major source for the extant posters illustrated in this volume is the Library of Congress Collection, rediscovered in 1966. It is important to have a good visual record of the graphic output of this program and this volume admirably illustrates the high quality and diversity of FAP production. The reminiscences of Tony Velonis and Richard Floethe, both involved in the FAP during the late 1930s, are interesting commentaries both on the technical aspects of serigraph poster production and on the politics of the project itself. Indeed, a more thorough, scholarly essay is needed to explore the ways in which artists once employed by the FAP (Lee Krasner, Stuart Davis, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollack, William deKooning) fell from favor between 1943 and 1947 and the resulting investigations of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. DeNoon seems to have little insight into the issues or politics behind government patronage of the visual, and particularly the graphic arts, or into the disassociation of the state and the arts by the end of the 1940s. The high proportion of women artists (reported at 41%) employed is not reflected; work by only four or five women is illustrated. Book design is handsome and usable; color plates are profuse. The value is not in the historical content or research, but rather in the wealth of visual material.-J. Barter, Amherst College

Booklist Review

For most Americans nowadays, the WPA Federal Arts Project of the 1930s is best known through the murals its painters made in public buildings throughout the land. This beautifully designed and produced album and history spotlights another area of prolific FAP activity the posters its graphic artists fashioned to publicize all manner of information, from health and safety advice to advertisements for a panoply of federal, state, and municipal services and activities. All but 40 of the 320 illustrations are color reproductions of those posters, which constitute a distinctive, homogeneous body of design that draws on several currents of twentieth-century art cubism, surrealism, constructivism while remaining fundamentally naturalistic. They also powerfully resemble the paintings of such American Scene artists as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, while the spirit of Rockwell Kent's woodcuts seems their ultimate tutelary genius. A sterling addition for design collections. Selected bibliography; index. RO. 741.674 Posters U.S. / Posters 20th century U.S. / Federal aid to the arts U.S. / New Deal, 1933-1939 / U.S. Work Projects Administration / Federal Art Project [OCLC] 87-50519