A modern block of flats contrasted with a row of unhealthy terrace houses. Colour lithograph after A. Games, 1942.

Games, Abram, 1914-1996.

Date:: [1942]

Reference:: 20282i

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About this work

Description

The block of flats is Kensal House, at the north end of Ladbroke Grove, London. It was built in 1936-1937 by the Gas, Light and Coke Company. B. Cherry and N. Pevsner, The buildings of England, London: 3, London 1991, p. 531

Publication/Creation

[London?] : Issued by A.B.C.A. (Army Bureau of Current Affairs), [1942] (London E.C.4 : Multi Machine Plates Ltd.)

Physical description

1 print : lithograph, printed in blue, green, yellow, pink, buff, grey, black and brown ; sheet 50.2 x 74.6 cm

Contributors

Lettering

Your Britain: fight for it now. Clean, airy and well planned dwellings make a great contribution to the Rehousing movement. This is a fine example of a block of workers' flats built in London in 1936. Designed by P.R.2. 70. A. Games. '42 Poster stuck on brick wall of old house, left, lettered: Carbol disinfectant kills fleas, bugs, mice, ra[ts] Verso of the Wellcome Institute's impression signed and dated in pencil: "Abram Games 1942 81/12"

Notes

One of a set of three posters commissioned by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs from Abram Games and Frank Newbould on the theme "Your Britain: fight for it now". The three works by Games bear record numbers 20281i, 20282i, and 20283i in the Wellcome Library catalogue. "Games's own posters were inspired by the Beveridge Reports's recently published blueprint for a welfare state. His three designs juxtaposed pre-war squalor with modern images of state-funded health centres, housing and schools. "It was strictly non-political," he claims, but we had to ask ourselves, "Why are we doing this? What kind of Britain are we fighting for?". Winston Churchill saw it differently ...Even now the suppression of the posters that Games regards as some of his best work still raises his hackles. "Churchill may have been a great wartime leader but he'd never visited a slum. I saw the war as a catalyst for achieving the things that Britain needed, but I think he saw those who supported the welfare state as communists." " (interview with Abram Games published in an article in The Sunday telegraph, 3 July 1994)

Reference

Wellcome Collection 20282i

Terms of use

Not in copyright in the UK. Was formerly UK Crown copyright, but that has expired. Letter to the Wellcome Library from the Estate of Abram Games, 24 January 2001

Exhibitions note

Exhibited in "Living with Buildings" at Wellcome Collection, 4 October 2018 - 3 March 2019