Stylogenyin the style of Spanish Civil War Poster

Pictorial & machine age · 1936–1939 · Southern Europe

Spanish Civil War Poster

Also known as Cartelismo de la Guerra Civil, Cartells de la Guerra Civil, Republican and anarchist war posters

The poster war waged by the Spanish Republic, its unions and its anarchist, communist and socialist parties against Franco's uprising. Unionised commercial artists painted gouache designs that lithographers split onto three or four zinc plates, so foreshortened militiamen, peasants and fists burst from flat red-and-black fields under stacked hand-lettered slogans and party acronyms. Renau's photomontage, Deco polish, caricature and Miró's stencil coexisted.

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A painted propaganda-style poster shows a woman in a red headscarf looking upward, with a large foreshortened hand gripping a rifle in the foreground. Behind her are a yellow sun and ranks of armed figures carrying red, yellow and purple flags, beneath the large red word “AVANZA.”
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Paint the design in gouache, then print it in three or four flat lithographic colours with airbrushed transitions.
  • Lead with red and black; split the sheet on a diagonal for anarchist posters and add the Republic's yellow and purple for the state.
  • Foreshorten a single militiaman, peasant or fist so that it bursts out of the frame towards the viewer.
  • Stack the slogan in heavy hand-drawn condensed capitals at top and bottom, in Castilian or Catalan.
  • Treat union and party acronyms (CNT-FAI, UGT, POUM, PSUC) as logotypes that sign the poster.

Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia: the unionised artists of the Sindicat de Dibuixants Professionals, trade unions, parties and Republican ministries

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Abundant decoration, Floral & vegetal, Whiplash line, Luxurious & glamorous, Calm & contemplative, Modular grid, Generous white space, Lowercase only

Palette

  • #d1281f
  • #141414
  • #efe3c6
  • #f1b52f
  • #5f2b6b
  • #8f8256

Typefaces

  • Hand-drawn condensed grotesque capitals

    cartelista lettering

  • Brush-painted slogan lettering in Castilian and Catalan

  • Art Deco geometric display lettering from pre-war commercial posters

Known for

  • Carles Fontserè, Llibertat!

    1936, colour lithograph: a peasant with a sickle against the red-and-black flag

  • Josep Renau, photomontage posters as Director General of Fine Arts (1936–39) and photomurals for the Spanish Pavilion, Paris

    1937

  • Joan Miró, Aidez l'Espagne

    1937, pochoir for Cahiers d'Art

  • Arturo Ballester, CNT-FAI posters

    1936–37

  • Helios Gómez

  • Sindicat de Dibuixants Professionals, Barcelona

    founded 1936

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Spanish Civil War Poster’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

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04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleSpanish Civil War Poster1936–1939 · Southern Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. UC San Diego Library, Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection, poster visual index (library.ucsd.edu/speccoll/visfront)
  2. Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 'How posters were produced' (Carles Fontserè's account)
  3. Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, collection record: Carles Fontserè, Llibertat! (1936)
  4. Miriam M. Basilio, Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions, and the Spanish Civil War (Ashgate, 2013)

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