The Woman in the Propaganda Posters. Categories and Graphic Structures

Abstract

In the century in which, from 1914, war was already looming over Europe and states would begin a process of militarization that would employ different social strata, the propaganda poster proved to be an effective means of persuasion and, increasingly, of recruitment. «In its schematization, the art of the poster […] is simplified even more: it no longer speaks, it makes one see, it makes one feel» [Gallo 1976, p. 131]. The passerby is somehow trained by the image to action, there is no more space for reflection. The coercive attitude that urges enlistment, the pointing finger and the patriotic extremism will counterbalance the definition of a woman whose identity oscillates between the conquered political equality in the countries of the Soviet Union and the return to a traditional figure afraid and worried as she watches the soldiers go off to war, as will happen in England, Australia and Ireland. The article poses some reflections on the representation of women in Soviet propaganda posters in a period that can be placed in the first half of the twentieth century. A selection of emblematic posters makes it possible to identify the graphic and metaphorical elements that, organized in categories and structures of signs, induced large masses of the population to strongly conditioned visions of the female figure and her role within society. Women entered the production cycle, they demonstrated in national strikes, they became factory workers conquering their freedom in the productive life declaring an emancipation now de facto and not only proclaimed as a right.