Committee to Rescue Italian Art benefit lecture series 1967

This poster was made in 1967 by Dietmar Winkler to promote a lecture series on Italian art. I love that it uses such a stark, graphic approach. The black and white contrast really grabs you. The negative space almost feels like a flowing liquid, and the black forms are these solid, almost geological shapes. It’s a brilliant way to signal the idea of rescuing Italian art, like pulling something precious from the depths. Look at how the shapes interact; there’s a tension between the organic and the abstract. It reminds me a bit of the Rorschach tests, where your mind tries to make sense of ambiguous forms. I see a dialogue with the earlier Vorticist movement in the UK, the way they tried to represent movement, energy and the modern world through abstraction. It's like Winkler is asking us to dive deep into art history, and find new meaning in it.