The Fifties poster boy
Last updated 05:34, Friday, 18 July 2008
The official Government posters of World War Two are some of the best-known British art of the 20th century. And an exhibition of work by the artist behind them opens in Carlisle tomorrow.
The exhibition, at Tullie House art gallery in Castle Street, features the work of Abram Games, the Government’s official poster designer during the war and the creator of the emblem for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
The display traces Games’s career from his winning of a London County Council poster competition after dropping out of art school, through the war and Festival of Britain to the work he produced for firms such as Guinness, British European Airways, London Transport, British Rail and the BBC.
He worked by the slogan “maximum meaning, minimum means”, keeping the images in his work simple and bold, and often gently humorous.
The exhibition features his early sketches and designs as well as the finished posters.
Games was an inventor as well as an artist and some of his creations are also on show, including the Cona coffee maker and portable paper copier.
Tullie House arts officer Fiona Venables said the work would appeal not just to those who lived through the 1940s and 1950s.
“His style is so recognisable, I think a lot of people will know the war posters and his later work for big companies like Guinness and British Rail,” she said
The exhibition runs until Sunday, September 14.
Tullie House art gallery is open from 10am to 5pm from Monday to Saturday and from 11am to 5pm most Sundays.
On September 7 it will be open from midday to 5pm and on September 14 from midday to 2pm. Admission is free.
