| Availability: | In stock |
A print of Rente 3,5%, 1958, by Lefor-Openo.
The posters of postwar France rarely made plain its daunting economic challenges. Instead, advertising focused on producing bright, optimistic images that saturated streets with cute rather than with chaos. This trend was epitomized by a female design team known as Lefor-Openo (Marie-Claire Lefort and Marie-Francine Oppeneau), whose signature upbeat, cartoonish characters would become emblematic of French mid-century commercial and political advertising.
In order to stabilize the French economy and fund government initiatives, President Charles de Gaulle turned his minister of finance, Antoine Pinay, to recreate an earlier program which came to be known as the "Pinay Loan," a bond tied to the fixed price of gold that would yield a 3.5% annual return. Pinay himself chose Lefor-Openo's design to announce the bond, one that features a serene Marianne (the personification of the French Republic wearing a Phrygian cap) knitting a sock out of gold thread—a physical representation of a “bas de laine” (woolen stocking, a French expression for “nest egg” or the treasure one keeps at home).
Measures 15.25 x 11 inches. Ships rolled.
© Estates of Marie-Claire Lefort and Marie-Francine Oppeneau, All Rights Reserved.
