The GDR strongly advocated for anti-imperialism and declared general freedom and solidarity with numerous countries including Chile, Uruguay, Vietnam, Laos, Angola and Palestine among others up until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Posters are effective because of their combination of massivity and art.
A poster image not transmitted on a screen but rather pasted or tacked onto walls. Poster art is an alternative space for the mass production of images, unlike television, radio or periodicals. In this introduction, we will describe the forms of artistic and sociopolitical communication in posters and graphic arts of this type. Then we will discuss the particular contexts which we have chosen to study the posters, in the former East Germany and Latin America, with posters all sharing the common themes related to political events in Latin America. The viewer will also encounter some posters produced in Nicaragua and Chile which compliment the East German ones in terms of content, and other types of artwork created by Germans as well as Latin American citizens.