Solidarité avec la grève des postiers contre les briseurs de grève - Mai 1968

Emerging from the fevered imagination of the May 1968 protests in France, this striking original poster exemplifies the raw visual language of worker solidarity and radical resistance that defined a transformative moment in French — and global — history.

Produced anonymously, like much of the Atelier Populaire’s silkscreen work, the poster declares with unapologetic clarity:
“Solidarité avec la grève des postiers” — Solidarity with the postal workers’ strike —
“Contre les briseurs de grève” — Against strikebreakers.

Printed in bold blue ink on simple cream stock, the graphic composition is as forceful as its message. The central motif — an abstracted and aggressively angular bird-wing mail symbol — is visually fractured, transformed from a symbol of communication into a badge of militant resistance. Beneath it, a faceless crowd of figures with raised arms evokes mass movement, direct action, and collective defiance. It's not just a protest; it's a visual chant of unity.

The May ’68 movement began with student protests, but quickly swept across the country, igniting the largest general strike in French history, with over 10 million workers walking off the job. This poster specifically supports the striking postal workers, whose withdrawal from France’s vast communication infrastructure became both a literal and symbolic silencing of state control. Their action was about more than labor rights — it was about voice, visibility, and autonomy.

Designed to be wheat-pasted on walls overnight, these posters weren’t meant for galleries — they were weapons of ideology, rallying cries inked in haste. Yet today, their stark typographic boldness and visceral hand-cut graphics feel timeless in their urgency.

This piece is more than an object of protest — it is an emblem of resistance culture, of horizontal solidarity against hierarchy, and of the enduring belief that even the most routine professions — like delivering mail — can become frontlines of revolution.

As relevant now as it was in 1968, this poster continues to whisper — or rather shout — that solidarity is a political act, and that the most powerful images are those born from necessity, not artifice.

May 68 - Politics - France

Stamp of the National School of Fine Arts

Good condition, creases, tears