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File:Gino Boccasile (1901-1952) WWII Italian anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1944 Repubblica Sociale Italiana African-American soldier selling Venus de Milo statue Broadsides and Ephemera Collection No known copyright.jpg

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English: Italia liberata ('Italy liberated')
  • World War II Italian anti-American Fascist propaganda poster (postcard?)
  • Satirical propaganda painting by Italian commercial illustrator Gino Boccasile (1901–1952) 1943, showing a black, smiling USA soldier ("liberator of Italy") selling out a stolen, white statue of Venus de Milo for 2 dollars
  • Poster issued by the Italian Social Republic (Italian: Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), known as the National Republican State of Italy (Italian: Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia, SNRI) prior to December 1943 but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò (Italian: Repubblica di Salò), a German puppet state which was created during the later part of World War II, that existed from the beginning of the German occupation of Italy in September 1943 until the surrender of German troops in Italy in May 1945. The German occupation triggered widespread national resistance against it and the Italian Social Republic, leading to the Italian Civil War.
  • No known copyright restrictions
Poster with Anti-American propaganda depicting American soldier, ally and liberator of Italy, selling for $2 the "stolen" statue of the "Venus de Milo" also known as Aphrodite of Milos (one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture (130 and 100 BC), believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty). The author is Gino Boccasile (1901-1952), an Italian illustrator, and a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Boccasile produced propaganda material for his government, including several racist and anti-semitic posters. African American soldiers were depicted in a negative way by the Italian Fascists.
There are no known copyright restrictions associated with this item. Anyone seeking to reuse this item is responsible for assuming any risk associated with their reuse. Duke University Libraries kindly requests that any use of this item be properly cited.
  • Heritage Autions 2018:
    On the outbreak of the Second World War [Boccasile] produced several racist and anti-Semitic posters that targeted the allies. This included one poster that referred to African-American soldiers in the United States Army. This poster is one of the most scarce and well-known pieces of propaganda produced by the Italians showing the black American sergeant, his features transformed nearly into a gorilla's face, as he grasps a ludicrously under-priced treasure of ancient Greece with animal savagery.
  • Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion: World War II by Anthony Rhodes 1987:
    Posters were created for the Duce by Italy's leading graphic artists. Foremost among them was Gino Boccasile, whose posters epitomized the Fascist themes: the courage of the black shirts against the Allies, anti-Semitism, and the portrayal of the enemy soldiers as barbarians.
  • La Difesa Della Razza (1938–1943): Primitivism and Classicism in Fascist Italy by Mariana Aguirre 2015:
    African-Americans in Fascist War Propaganda (...) Boccasile, a commercial designer and illustrator, became a political propagandist during the late 1930s and later collaborated with the Republic of Salò. A member of the Italian Schutzstaffel (SS), his posters abandoned La difesa della razza’s reliance/rejection of modernist aesthetics in favor of amore legible style. In Boccasile’s images, La difesa della razza’s numerous allusions to Africa were replacedby unfavorable representations of African-American members of the United States’army. A poster featuring the Venus de Milo depicts an African-American soldier whose lumberingpose contrasts with the statue’s graceful contrapposto and idealized beauty. Here, the alleged Jewish domination of the art market Pensabene wrote about in La difesa della razza is hinted at due to the price scribbled on the Venus’stomach. (...) These images demonstrate the twofold use of the classical that prevailed in Italy’s racist propaganda during World War II. First of all, the statues are supposed to render the soldiers as savages, as had occurred in comparable images in La difesa della razza. Second, their presence uncovers the rise of a new threat against Italy, since they represent the fear that its artistic heritage would be damaged or looted during the war. Whereas La difesa della razza was tied to the regime’s racial and colonial policies at home and abroad, Boccasile’s posters address an urgent situation in which individuals of African descent were no longer in colonial holdings or represented by modern artists in degenerate artworks, but had become immediate threats to the metropole.
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https://repository.duke.edu/dc/broadsides/bdsit06031

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4v69bg4n
Author Gino Boccasile (1901–1952). No known copyright restrictions.
Other versions
  • Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1943
    Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1943
  • Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1944 (postcard?)
    Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1944 (postcard?)
  • Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1943 (low resolution image)
    Gino Boccasile: Anti-American Fascist propaganda poster 1943 (low resolution image)

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