Support! Vote! Strike!

1900 to 1920

In the early twentieth century artists made greater use of graphic and applied arts. Posters became very sophisticated. Well-known artists designed posters for commercial, cultural, and political clients. Their objective was to introduce art in everyday life and to make it available to the masses. Their purposes were educational as well as social.

Dutch posters acquired characteristic features: most were small and consisted of a headline, an image, and a subtitle. Decorative patterns and a balanced use of space were important, dynamics were rare. The symbols and texts tended to be quiet and civilized.

These characteristics were discernible on political posters as well. Socially dedicated artists such as Richard Roland Holst and Albert Hahn worked for the rising social democratic movement and associated artistic innovation with political change. They believed that artists should draw their designs on the printing blocks themselves and should not leave this task to the printer's lithographer. Between 1913 and 1918, Albert Hahn designed several magnificent, classical posters for the massive general suffrage campaigns and around the elections.

1. D.H. Melk, Exhibition of home industry, 1909

2. Albert Hahn, People's petition for universal suffrage, 1911

3. Martin Monnickendam, Petition movement for universal suffrage, ca. 1911

4. Richard Roland Holst, The Central, 1912

5. Albert Hahn, Vote Red!, 1913

6. Louis Raemaekers, Against the Tarif law, 1913

7. Willy Sluiter, Society heading to the abyss, 1918

8. Albert Hahn, Vote Red!, 1918

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