Gallery

OSPAAAL Tricontinental

ProMax

OSPAAAL — the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America — turned a Havana ink shortage into one of the twentieth century's most electric graphic languages. Silkscreen presses limited artists to two or three flat colours per run, so designers like Alfredo Rostgaard and Olivio Martínez leaned into bold silhouettes, posterized photography and shouting slab type instead of nuance. Folded into every issue of Tricontinental magazine and mailed to more than 87 countries, these posters carried anti-colonial and anti-imperialist messages on a strong black field with cyan, gold and revolutionary red overprints. The style reads as urgent, mass-produced and defiantly unpolished — propaganda built for the wall, not the gallery.

Learn more about the OSPAAAL Tricontinental style

  • OriginHavana, Cuba
  • PeriodOSPAAAL founded 1966; peak poster production 1967–1990
  • DesignerAlfredo Rostgaard · Olivio Martínez · Rafael Enríquez
  • MovementsThird-World solidarity graphics · political silkscreen poster art

Web examples

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Slide examples

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