Puerto Rico (WPA Art Project, c.1943)...

Description

Puerto Rico (WPA Art Project, c.1943) Travel Poster (22" X 28"). The WPA (Works Progress Administration) sponsored a huge number of projects in an attempt to lift by its bootstraps the Depression bound economy as well as to give work to the army of unemployed. Many of their efforts were concentrated in the arts and one small corner of that was the WPA Poster Project. Hundreds of posters on a wide variety of themes were commissioned and the Library of Congress now has a special collection devoted to those that have survived. This travel poster from the early 40s by Esteban Soriano is not in that collection and most efforts to find any information on the artist met with frustration until we contacted a friend in Puerto Rico who forwarded the following: The poster signed[printed signature] by him, is from a promotional tourism campaign organized by the Puerto Rican Tourism Institute during the period of the American military governor's ruling in Puerto Rico. The typographical logo Puerto Rico U.S.A. was predominantly used by Puerto Rico during the 1939 World's Fair in New York. While the slogan Discover Puerto Rico U.S.A where the Americas meet was actively used between 1943-1944, it was discontinued by the end of the Second World War. Fine+ Condition on Linen.

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