Persuasive-graphic propaganda: Signs, shapes, glances

Abstract

Starting from an iconographic recognition of those social transformations that in the twentieth century recognized in the poster a means of communication and in the image a device for capillary information, the essay aims to deepen the forms assumed by historical ideologies in posters propaganda, the graphic metaphors adopted to spread the message and the persuasive techniques to spread its values. This is not an iconographic classification structured by artist or historical period, but an analysis on the identification of a common language for the representation of political ideologies that several historical moments intertwined with the artistic movements from which they drawn strategies and expression techniques for the formal composition of a visionary and visual propaganda. The graphic material of the essay summarizes visual stories of social actions that found expression in the fight against national control policies, in the liberation movements and in respect for human rights campaigns during the reconstruction phases of socialist societies like Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or at the dawn of the Italian-German dictatorial regimes and in the countries militarily occupied by Nazi-fascists, through propaganda posters and graphic units codified by symbols and verbal-visual constructs.