Earlier this month, on May 4, various
news sources highlighted the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State Shootings, which caused me to reflect on the poster pictured above, which is displayed in my office.
My wife, Janis, owns this 1969 vintage silkscreen-printed poster that she purchased as a college freshman in 1970, during the height of the Vietnam anti-war movement. The poster is a typical “peace” poster of the day, printed in three colors and depicting the pacifist words from Micah 4:3: “…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
Initially and interestingly the poster was purchased at
St. Benet’s Catholic bookstore in Chicago’s Loop. The signature of the artist, R. Heitmann, is printed in the lower left. Especially noteworthy is the name of the publisher, which is printed as
© Tiber Press NYC 1969 and located at the bottom edge in the margin.
The gold colored hand-drawn lettering is imaginative, feels slightly Celtic, and seems to caricature
Mabel Luci Attwell’s lettering style. The optical vibration of the alternating green and blue colors is evocative of the period. Dynamically, the green and blue shapes form banners of rhythmically undulating “pennants” for the biblical verse. Additionally, the colored shapes emphasize the text through movement and counter movement.
This poster tells a history of how it was displayed, over the years, in various forms of student housing, in the early to mid 1970s, and for many years being rolled up. Printed on heavy weight paper the poster shows wear from thumbtack holes in the corners and scotch tape residue on the margins.
As a side, when Andy Warhol became interested in silkscreen-printing, in the late 1950s or early 60s, he went to Tiber Press for technical advice.