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A rare working proof from Vojtěch Preissig’s striking wartime poster series, issued by the Slav Press Bureau to recruit Slavic-American volunteers for the Allied cause. The bold composition with an angular cavalryman in silhouette, charging beneath a fluttering “M3” guidon, is shown here in an early two-color state, omitting the third and final black screen that typically rendered the full recruiting slogan “Come on, boys! Do your duty! By enlisting now!”
Preissig, a Czech modernist trained in Prague and Paris, had joined the faculty at Boston’s Wentworth Institute the previous year and helped establish silkscreen as a viable artistic and propagandistic medium in the U.S. long before its adoption by the WPA. The present sheet reveals his working method: layering flat fields of color with stenciled precision, testing balance and registration before completing the print with black linework and text.
The Slav Press Bureau issued at least four posters in this wartime series, all now scarce in any state. This two-color proof is not only an uncommon survival but also a vivid document of Preissig’s process during a formative moment in both his career and in the history of American screen printing.
