Alberto Blanco González, Day of Solidarity with the People of GUATEMALA, 1977

Between the 1960s and 1990s, more than fifty designers worked at OSPAAAL (the Organisation of Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia and Latin America). Based in Cuba, they made magazines and posters that were sent around the world. Their aim was to promote radical political ideas. Many of their posters celebrate socialist revolutions and liberation movements from the Global South.

For this poster, Alberto Blanco González used a photograph of Luis Augusto Turcios Lima taken at the 1966 Tricontinental conference. The 24-year-old was killed in a car accident later that year, but was remembered as a leader of the guerrilla group, the Rebel Armed Forces during the Guatemalan Civil War.

Rather than creating formal portraits, many of OSPAAAL’s designers took inspiration from pop art and commercial advertising in their representations of political figures.