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Shepard Fairey 'Hope' Obama - SOLD

Shepard Fairey 'Hope' Obama - SOLD

Shepard Fairey (b. 1970)
Hope, 2008
Original Barack Obama Campaign Poster
Offset lithograph in colors on wove paper (wheatpaste)
Unframed: 35-3/4 x 23-3/4 inches (90.8 x 60.3 cm)

Wheatpaste is synonymous with street/urban art. Wheatpasting allows an artist to economically and quickly display vast amounts of artwork on public buildings, streets, trains and other publicly viewed surfaces. Named for the paste made to hang the posters, wheatpastes have been used by renowned, contemporary artists for guerilla marketing and to make impactful statements about the society we live in. In this case, support for a presidential campaign.

Street artist, graphic designer, and activist Shepard Fairey created this visionary portrait of then Senator Barack Obama in 2008 as a form of grassroots activism to support Obama’s first presidential campaign. Fairey based the work on an Associated Press photograph by Mannie Garcia, which he transformed with his signature high-contrast stencil technique, inspired by the political message and bold graphics of Soviet Socialist Realism. First disseminated as a street poster, the image was later used to create thousands of stickers and T-shirts and was widely circulated online.

Emblazoned with the word “Hope” and featuring reds and blues that complement the campaign logo designed by Sol Sender, Fairey’s portrait was quickly adopted as an official image of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called the poster “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You.’”



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