!Atención¡ Las Enfermedades Venéreas Amenazan Tu Salud. !Prevente Contra Ellas¡ (Attention! Venereal diseases threaten your health. Take precautions against them!)

Francisco Rivero Gil

1936–1939

A lithographic poster from late-1930s Spain in which Francisco Rivero Gil stages a stylized, almost surreal embrace to warn viewers about venereal disease and to urge preventive action.

At first it reads like a tender embrace, but the flat, contrasting planes of pale skin and deep brown, the skeletal hand laid over the darker back, and the bold, urgent typography turn the image into a chilling, visible metaphor for hidden contagion.

Part of a wave of interwar public-health graphics, this poster shows how modernist design and stark symbolism were used to make invisible medical threats legible and to prompt collective behavior change.

Palette

Art Terms

Lithography Poster Graphic design Design Propaganda Surrealism Modern art

Exhibitions

Spanish and U.S. Government Posters

1937

A History of the Modern Poster

1941

Committed to Print

1988

New Spanish Painting and Sculpture

1960