Let Us Prioritise More Iron and Steel in Building Our Country!

Some years ago, in a study of Czechoslovak-Chinese relationships in the 1950s, the sinologist Martin Slobodník took a look at Anton Holly’s collection of Chinese propaganda posters. And although this was not part of his research task, he translated the poster texts and gave us information about the authors of some of them. We have therefore been able to identify one of the most famous Chinese poster artists of the second half of the 20th century — Cai Zhenhuaa (1912–2006).

In our featured poster, this excellent comics sketch-maker and politically committed designer of important state commissions offers an ecstatic emotion of building socialism, derived from the early period of the Maoist republic (1949–1965). As regards the Czechoslovak-Chinese cooperation promoted here, its life was ephemeral.

At the turn of the 1960s relations between Beijing and Moscow became notably embittered, and that meant the end of friendship for pro-Soviet satellites. It was in vain that Ján Kostra wrote: “… we know how People’s China was born in pain / how the steel was tempered in the fire / of party truth, which posted / a quarter of humanity / to the defence of peace…” The course had been reset, and the poem was deleted from a prepared anthology of Kostra’s works by the censors of the Print Administration.

Viera Kleinová ● “Seven Things About…” propaganda in the Collection of Posters and Graphic Design (medium.com)