“Aid the wounded” poster for Red Army Day
Poster designed by F.H.K. Henrion for Red Army Day on February 23, 1943, issued by the Joint Committee for Soviet Aid during World War II:
Donations to Joint Committee for Soviet Aid under the Patronage of H.E. The Soviet Ambassador
Born Heinrich Fritz Kohn in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1914, the designer later named himself Frederick Henri Kay Henrion. He went to Paris to study with Paul Colin and there discovered the works of Cassandre as well as the Surrealists, which gave him a taste for collage and photomontage. In 1939, he moved to London. After being interned on the Isle of Man as an alien, Henrion worked for the Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information, using his talents as a poster designer to support the war effort against Nazi Germany.
The poster depicts a soldier wearing a helmet with a red star on it over his bandaged face, rendered with a coarse halftone effect. While “red army day feb. 23” is in Block-Signal, “AID THE WOUNDED” is shown in bold condensed caps, slanted and on a sloping baseline. These are either custom drawn or from an unidentified typeface. The Signal glyphs might be rendered by hand. At least the numerals don’t match those shown on a specimen card. The small print is set in two italic weights from Erbar-Grotesk.
