Propaganda and Political Posters
During the First and Second World Wars, recruiting posters became extremely common. Many of those propaganda posters have persisted in the national consciousness, such as the "Lord Kitchener Wants You" posters from the United Kingdom, and the "Uncle Sam wants you" posters from the United States, or the "Loose Lips Sink Ships" posters that warned of foreign spies.
Posters during wartime were also used for propaganda purposes, persuasion, and motivation, such as the famous Rosie the Riveter posters which exhorted women workers during World War II that "We can do it!". The Soviet Union also produced a plethora of propaganda posters, some of which became iconic representations of the Great Patriotic War.
During the democratic revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe the poster was very important weapon in the hand of the opposition.
Brave printed and hand-made political posters appeared on the Berlin Wall, on the statue of St. Wenseslas in Prague and around the unmarked grave of Imre Nagy in Budapest and the role of them was indispensable for the democratic change.
A recent example of an influential political poster is Shepard Fairey's Barack Obama "HOPE" poster.
