1940s Art

Created circa 1947, this original poster by Pierre Cauchat was produced to promote the European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall Plan, the ambitious American initiative launched after the Second World War to rebuild Europe's shattered economies. Through a refined symbolic composition, the artist expresses the ideals of cooperation, reconstruction, and shared prosperity that lay at the heart of post-war European recovery. The design is remarkable for its simplicity and visual strength. Emerging from a tree branch is a white plant bearing a red flower, while its stem is wrapped in the flags of numerous European nations. The imagery suggests that although Europe's countries possess distinct identities, they flourish together through cooperation. The restrained palette of black, white, and muted natural tones is punctuated by the vivid colors of the national flags, drawing the viewer's attention to the theme of international unity. The slogans "Coopération Intereuropéenne" and "Prospérité Intereuropéenne" reinforce the message that lasting peace and economic growth depend upon collaboration between European nations. Rather than relying on overt political imagery, Cauchat employs botanical symbolism to illustrate the idea that prosperity grows from shared effort, making the poster one of the most elegant visual interpretations of the Marshall Plan. Announced in 1947 by U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the European Recovery Program provided billions of dollars in financial assistance to Western European countries between 1948 and 1952. Beyond rebuilding infrastructure and industry, the program encouraged economic integration and closer cooperation among participating nations, laying important foundations for what would eventually become the European Union. Pierre Cauchat's composition perfectly reflects the optimistic spirit of the immediate post-war years. The poster departs from traditional propaganda in favor of a sophisticated modern graphic language influenced by contemporary French design. Its clean forms, balanced composition, and symbolic imagery allow the political message to be conveyed with elegance rather than force. Today, this original Marshall Plan poster...

This detailed 1942 map is part of the Atlas de la France Vinicole, an ambitious cartographic work by Louis Larmat devoted to the geography of France’s wine regions. The sheet focuses...

"Robert Riggs was awarded the Gold Medal for Excellence by the New York Art Directors Club for ten consecutive years and received many additional awards." He was elected to the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame. His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Fine Arts and the U.S. Library of Congress. Riggs's compositons are "monumental" Walt Reed - work is unframed. - Riggs was a Gay Artist.

Original World War 2 vintage poster: YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO MISS EITHER! BUY BONDS EVERY PAYDAY. Linen-backed, fine condition, ready to frame. Great ...

Color cliché print after Pablo Picasso, titled “Composition”, edited by Editions du Chêne, Paris, France, 1943. This rare color cliché print presents a striking composition that ref...

American life is captured in this Clyde Singer painting, After the Shower (1949), where he depicts a woman walking down the street after a storm with her umbrella in hand. An accompl...

Original, vintage silver gelatin print by Imogen Cunningham. Printed by the artist circa 1949 with Certificate of Authenticity from the trust on the back of the mount. Artist Biograp...

Date: 1948 Medium: Oil on Board Dimensions: 17.25" x 13.50" Signature: Signed Lower Left Magazine Story Illustration

China ink drawing and watercolor on paper- Hand signed. Very good condition.

Watercolor on paper realized in 1940s. Hand signed. Very good condition.

Waterfront by Toni Frissell Street dancers perform on the coastline of Portugal, 1946. (Toni Frissell) Limited signature stamped edition print 30 x 30" inches / 76 x 76 cm paper si...

Phillips de Pury Collection of Alain Dominique Perrin Printed 1985, One from an edition of 21 dye transfer prints Signed Irving Penn Verso Literature: Szarkowki, Irving Penn Irving...

Vintage 1942 Coca-Cola "Our America" Poster: Producing Motion Pictures. Original poster: Our America. 1. Producing Motion Pictures. Archival linen backed in excellent conditio...

Antique American modernist nocturnal view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Oil on board. Signed verso. Framed.

Medium: lithograph (after the original Edouard Vuillard lithograph). Printed on Renage wove paper in 1948 by the atelier Mourlot and published in an edition of 2500. Image size: 11 1...

Original cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, November 13, 1948 The Post described, “Artist Stevan Dohanos felt like a baseball coach who had everything he needed excep...

Medium: lithograph (after the original Edouard Vuillard lithograph). Printed on Renage wove paper in 1948 by the atelier Mourlot and published in an edition of 2500. Size: 12 3/8 x 9...

Medium: lithograph (after the original Edouard Vuillard lithograph). Printed on Renage wove paper in 1948 by the atelier Mourlot and published in an edition of 2500. Size: 9 1/2 x 12...

Created circa 1925, this original French entertainment poster was printed in colour lithography to advertise the daring performances of aviator and parachutist Paul Peuillot, celebra...

Published in 1945, this original French photographic poster was issued by the Ministry of War’s Army Cinematographic Service. Number three in the official La France fait la guerre se...

Very finely executed modernist ballet scene. Pastel and gouache on paper. Handsomely framed. Image size, 12H by 16L.

Date: 1945 Medium: Gouache Dimensions: 21.25" x 16.50" Signature: Signed Lower Left Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, February 3, 1945

An original watercolor by Ohio artist Joseph Koch who was affectionately known as Koco during his long life of almost 105 years. This beautiful watercolor painting titled "Winter's ...

Medium: heliogravure (after the etching from Goya's Tauromaquia series). Printed in 1947 in a limited edition of 500 on Guarro laid paper, and published in Barcelona by Ediciones Ome...

Vogue Sunshine by Toni Frissell Limited Signature Stamped Edition A model poses for a Vogue photoshoot, 1946. 40 x 30" inches / 101 x 76 cm paper size Archival pigment print Unfr...

Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Society Satirical Cartoon, ca. 1940s. Gouache on heavy illustration paper, image measures 17 x 14 inches; 23 x 20 inches in matting. Signed lower left. Very good condition but matting panel should be replaced. Unframed. Provenance: Ethel Maud Mott Herman, artist (1883-1984), West Orange NJ. For two decades, she drew almost 600 cartoons for The New Yorker with female characters that commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony. In the mid-1920s, Harold Ross, the founder of a new magazine called The New Yorker, was looking for cartoonists who could create sardonic, highbrow illustrations accompanied by witty captions that would function as social critiques. He found that talent in Barbara Shermund. For about two decades, until the 1940s, Shermund helped Ross and his first art editor, Rea Irvin, realize their vision by contributing almost 600 cartoons and sassy captions with a fresh, feminist voice. Her cartoons commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony, using female characters who critiqued the patriarchy and celebrated speakeasies, cafes, spunky women and leisure. They spoke directly to flapper women of the era who defied convention with a new sense of political, social and economic independence. “Shermund’s women spoke their minds about sex, marriage and society; smoked cigarettes and drank; and poked fun at everything in an era when it was not common to see young women doing so,” Caitlin A. McGurk wrote in 2020 for the Art Students League. In one Shermund cartoon, published in The New Yorker in 1928, two forlorn women sit and chat on couches. “Yeah,” one says, “I guess the best thing to do is to just get married and forget about love.” “While for many, the idea of a New Yorker cartoon conjures a highbrow, dry non sequitur — often more alienating than familiar — Shermund’s cartoons are the antithesis,” wrote McGurk, who is an associate curator and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. “They are about human nature, relationships, youth and age.” (McGurk is writing a book about Shermund. And yet by the 1940s and ’50s, as America’s postwar focus shifted to domestic life, Shermund’s feminist voice and cool critique of society fell out of vogue. Her last cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1944, and much of her life and career after that remains unclear. No major newspaper wrote about her death in 1978 — The New York Times was on strike then, along with The Daily News and The New York Post — and her ashes sat in a New Jersey funeral...

This original vintage Swiss travel poster, Central Switzerland – Beautiful Switzerland, was designed by Alois Carigiet in 1944 for the Swiss National Tourist Office as part of its ce...

This impression (after the original woodcut) was printed on japon paper in 1943 in an edition of 250, and is one of Gauguin's beautiful Tahiti compositions. Image size: 4 x 7 1/4 inc...

Robert Vale Faro, 'Bullfight', wood engraving, 1945, edition 15. Signed, dated, titled, and numbered '105' (the artist's inventory number) and '13/15' in pencil. A fine, richly-inked impression, on cream wove paper, with full margins (1 1/16 to 2 3/8 inches), in excellent condition. Scarce. Matted to museum standards, unframed. Image size 5 1/16 x 4 1/16 inches (129 x 103 mm); sheet size 8 9/16 x 6 5/16 inches (217 x 160 mm). An impression of this work is included in the museum collection of the National Gallery of Art. ABOUT THE ARTIST Robert Vale Faro (1902-1988) was a well-known modernist architect and artist associated with the Chicago Bauhaus. He received his degree in architecture and design from the Armour Institute in Chicago and worked at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1924-27, where he was influenced by Harry Kurt Bieg and Le Corbusier. Upon his return to Chicago, Faro worked with the important modernist Chicago architects George and William Keck under Louis Sullivan. Faro founded the avant-garde printmaking group Vanguard in 1945. The group counted Atelier 17 artists Stanley William Hayter, Sue Fuller, and Anne Ryan as New York members and Francine Felsenthal...

Medium: original etching. Printed in 1946 on at the atelier Quesneville on BFK Rives paper and published in a limited edition of 300 for the "Alternance" portfolio (a collective art ...

Paris: Place du Tertre and Sacre Coeur, the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris by Henri Miloch (1898-1979) signed lower right watercolour and gouache painting on ar...

Signed Lower Left by Artist The Saturday Evening Post cover, December 1, 1945

L'uomo nel Pozzo is the eleventh issue of the collection "Concilium Lithographicum" curated by Dora Broussard and printed in Rome by the Istituto Grafico Tiberino in 1946. Composed ...

This striking circa 1940 poster dedicated to the R.M.S. Queen Elizabeth captures the grandeur and prestige of transatlantic travel at the height of the ocean liner era. Designed by T...

Created by R. A. Drouot, this original 1947 poster printed in lithography by Bedos & Cie., Paris, announces the Cinquantenaire Ader exhibition held at the Musée Galliera from 11 ...

This drawing was made by Guston in 1945–46 as one of a series of illustrations for O. Henry's short story The Gift of the Magi, commissioned and published by ARTnews in December 1946...

A highly decorative framed color print after Vincent van Gogh, depicting Armand Roulin, one of the most recognizable sitters from Van Gogh’s celebrated Arles period. Published in Par...

Presenting a just discovered mixed media painting by American artist Robert McIntosh, (1916-2010.) Tango, is an original mixed media gouache o...

Dixieland (1948) Limited Estate Stamped (Photo By Slim Aarons) An impromptu concert in Rome with American Jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971), Earl ‘Fatha’ Hines (1905 – 1983) on piano and Jack Teagarden (1905 – 1964) on trombone playing with the ‘Rhythm Kings’. Hines and Teargarden play in Armstrong’s ‘All-Stars’ band. November 1948 About this Image: Louis Daniel Armstrong, nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor who was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. Earl Kenneth Hines, also known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano...

A view of historical and evocative watercolor landscapes of early California and the Southwest, portraits and figurative work from the 1930’s and 1940’s throughout her prolific 57 ye...

Color cliché print after Pablo Picasso, titled “Composition”, edited by Editions du Chêne, Paris, France, 1943. This rare color cliché print presents a striking composition that ref...

Original poster: AOA to USA, American Overseas Airlines. THERE'S ALWAYS SUNSHINE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. This poster is archival linen-backed...

Civilization, c. 1948, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 20 x 24 inches, label verso reads “Eugene M. Dyczkowski / Grand Inland, N. Y. / Civilization,” inscribed verso in the artist’...

Matiz managed to create intimate portraits, in which Frida seemed happy to surrender to her lens. The result was dynamic portraits of Khalo, a wonderful example of both the photograp...

An oil on board Judaic painting by modern artist Ben-Zion Weinman. It depicts a portrait in profile of an old Jew. The work is signed "Ben-Zion". Born in 1897, Ben-Zion Weinman c...

Title: Theme M 5 Year: February 7, 1943 Medium: Collotype on vélin pur fil paper Size: 10.04 x 13.15 inches Condition: Very good Inscription: Signed in the plate, unnumbered Publishe...

Black and white photographs that reveal the various facets and aesthetic searches of the legendary Colombian photographer, recognized as the creator of memorable realistic, abstract ...

Date: 1994 Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 22.00" x 18.00" Signature: Signed Lower Right Book Cover Robert Berran has been a prolific romance and historical book cover illustrator...

A stylish, vintage, 1940s fashion study featuring an elegant design for women's evening wear. Artwork size: 11 x 8 1/2 inches. Archivally matted to 16 x 12 inches. Provenance: Co...

Original 'U. S. SAVINGS BONDS will help you get there! NOW Back Your future. Linen-backed, excellent condition. Archival linen backed with original government-issued fold ma...

Issued in 1947, this original Soviet propaganda poster promotes the importance of personal savings as a patriotic contribution to the reconstruction of the Soviet Union following the...

Lakshmi-Narasimha with Prahlada and Garuda Opaque watercolor on paper, c. 1940-1970 Unsigned India, probably Odisha (Orissa), Puri region The scene depicted Narasimha—whose name mea...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Lower Right Caricatures by George Wachsteter (1911-2004) of four Broadway male stars, Sept 1946, including Lew Parker, Ri...

Medium: lithograph (after the original Edouard Vuillard lithograph). Printed on Renage wove paper in 1948 by the atelier Mourlot and published in an edition of 2500. Size: 12 3/8 x 9...

MARIO SIRONI 1885-1961 Sassari 1885-1961 Milan (Italian) Title: Studies for Three Figures Studio per le Tre Figure, 1948 Technique: Hand Signed Pen and Watercolour Drawing on Pape...

Reginald Marsh "Brooklyn Bridge" NYC Modernism WPA Mid-Century Watercolor Modern Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954) Brooklyn Bridge, 1940, Signed and dated Reginald Marsh May 1940 (lr), Watercolor over traces of pencil on paper , 15 x 22 inches sight. Reginald Marsh was born in Paris, France in 1898, the child of artist parents. He was born over a small cafe on Paris' Left Bank. He was brought to the United States in 1900 and was drawing before he was three. He studied art at Yale University and the Art Students League, during which time he worked primarily as an illustrator for New York newspapers and magazines. After studying in Paris in 1925 and 1926, he turned seriously to painting. In 1929 he was introduced to the egg-tempera medium, which he used extensively the rest of his life. Marsh's gusto for painting the bottom crust of society contrasted curiously with his background. His parents, both well-known artists, were steeped in academic traditions. He attended Lawrenceville Academy and Yale; perhaps this elite background made it possible to paint the earthy people he did with a journalist's objectivity. An admirer of Rubens and Delacroix, he disliked modernist art; indeed, his lifelong preoccupation was with people - enjoying themselves at beaches, at amusement parks, or on crowded city streets. Marsh was a second-generation Ash Can School painter and printmaker, best known as an urban regionalist. He spent his days sketching in small notebooks...

World War II Invades Central Park, 1943, oil on canvas, signed lower right, 30 x 36 inches, literature: Barton, Phyllis, Cecil C. Bell, McGrew Color Graphics (Kansas City, MO, 1976),...

Vogue Sunshine by Toni Frissell A vogue model poses for her shoot on a beach holding a colourful umbrella, 1946. (Toni Frissell) Limited signature stamped edition print 20 x 16" in...

This powerful poster by John Heartfield is a striking example of political satire through photomontage, a medium he helped pioneer during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic. ...

Clarence Holbrook Carter (American, 1904-2000) Winter Landscape, 1947 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left 19 x 22.5 inches 25 x 28.25 inches, framed Clarence Holbrook Carter a...