URD - Les écraseurs les écrasés 1932

This striking original French political poster was created by Pierre Dukercy for the 1932 legislative elections. Published by the French Radical and Radical-Socialist Party, it attacks the conservative Union républicaine et démocratique, identified by the initials “URD” on the front of the locomotive.

Entitled Les Écraseurs, les Écrasés—“The Crushers and the Crushed”—the poster depicts the URD as an enormous black locomotive marked “Réaction.” Ironically presented as the Convoi de la bonne humeur, or “Train of Good Cheer,” it carries caricatures of several prominent French political figures. André Tardieu drives the locomotive with Pierre Laval at his side, while Philippe Pétain stands on the roof with his sabre raised. Louis Marin directs the group, and Paul Reynaud, Paul Painlevé and André Maginot appear inside the engine.

Below the speeding train, men and women fall, flee and struggle to escape, symbolising the ordinary people supposedly crushed by the political and economic policies of the right. Printed in lithograph, the poster’s dramatic red, black and blue-grey palette, bold typography and expressive caricatures create an exceptionally powerful example of French interwar electoral propaganda.

Original poster

Politics - Socialism - France

Convoy of good humor - André Tardieu pilot the locomotive assisted by Pierre Laval, Philippe Pétain Saber in the Clair on the roof, Louis Marin directs, in the locomotive Paul Reynaud, Paul Painlevé and André Maginot

Edition of the Radical & Radical Socialist Party Paris

Good condition, traces of folds, restorations