About the Sarrade Collection

The Sarrade Collection brings together more than 300 original Chinese propaganda posters, a unique visual archive that spans one of the most turbulent and transformative periods of the twentieth century. Created between the early years of the People’s Republic and the close of the Cultural Revolution, these works offer a striking lens into the aspirations, anxieties, and aesthetics of modern China.

The breadth of the collection is remarkable: it encompasses posters extolling agricultural reform, industrial progress, and revolutionary heroism, as well as those celebrating science, education, health, family life, and international solidarity. From the highly stylized optimism of the 1950s to the bold imagery of the 1970s, the works chart the shifting visual strategies used to mobilize, persuade, and inspire entire generations.

What makes the Sarrade Collection especially compelling is its scope. Rather than focusing on a single theme, it presents propaganda as a cultural fabric—woven into daily life, touching every sector of society, and reflecting both collective ideals and individual aspirations. Each poster not only reveals the artistic conventions of its time—bright palettes, exaggerated scale, heroic figures—but also captures the lived imagination of an era where images carried immense political and emotional weight.

Beyond their historical value, these posters resonate today as powerful works of graphic art. They stand at the intersection of design, ideology, and social history, inviting fresh readings about the role of images in shaping belief and belonging.

Taken together, the Sarrade Collection is more than an assemblage of posters: it is a cultural atlas, a testament to the extraordinary capacity of visual propaganda to define identity, narrate progress, and project visions of the future.