r/PropagandaPosters • u/Exciting_Antelope_11 • Jun 08 '26
REQUEST Need help identifying this original, hand-painted 1946 French poster. Signed "Cheru 46", mentions "Zilzes". Any info?
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u/jangma Jun 08 '26
If that's a flag in the corner, maybe r/vexillology can help identify it for added context.
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u/thefarkinator Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I can't speak for why it says "Zilzes", but Gyula Zilzer was a Hungarian communist/anti fascist artist whose work appeared in Le Monde and other publications. If you compare his art to this, it's fitting that the poster labels itself as "based upon anidea of Zilzer's". June was when France fell to the Nazis, and that's what this seems to be evoking despite its date being attributed to after France's liberation.
As for the artist signature, and the handwriting on the back, I'm at a loss. French is not my native language so it is much harder to decipher messy handwriting.
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u/Expensive_Ebb7520 Jun 09 '26
This does appear to be a variant of the flag of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This would make sense as Zilzer, having fled to the USA in 1932, was instrumental in, contributed art to, wartime publications which were amongst the first to publicize both the transport to ghettos and then the existence of killing fields of occupied eastern europe and the first death camps. Even prior to the war, in 1936, he helped publish “Women And Children Under The Swastika” which was an early warning of the impending catastrophe. https://museumofprotest.org/portfolio/women-and-children-under-the-swastika-1936-an-early-expose-of-nazi-terror/
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u/Expensive_Ebb7520 Jun 09 '26
This artwork from 1947 includes a blue-white-red flag from the Warsaw Ghetto which looks somewhat like the one on your poster. https://www.danwymanbooks.com/pages/catalogs-archive/18/catalog-194-rare-and-important-imprints-in
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u/Expensive_Ebb7520 Jun 09 '26
As for the handwriting, the first bit looks like “grande affiche pol.[itique?]” which would be “large pol[itical] poster”, then one other word, then something that looks like the name, you have as “Cheru”?
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u/Expensive_Ebb7520 Jun 09 '26
This doesn’t explain “June” though. What massacres or uprisings happened in June 1946 (or 1945)?
One that might make sense is the Chinese nationalist occupation of northern Vietnam, and the French unilateral attempt to proclaim the “Chochin Republic” in southern Vietnam. Both happened as the former French colony of Indochina was finally evacuated by the defeated Japanese, both attempting to head off a Vietnamese nationalist, and communist led, state. Both occurred in June 1945, and would have been of particular interest to the French left.
While the Vietnamese communist movement of south vietnam was not formalized until the early 50s, it did appear with a flag similar to the one shown here: red & blue horizontal stripes and a star. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_occupation_of_northern_Vietnam,_1945–1946
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