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“Go you too to Amazonia”: analysis of a poster designed by Jean-Pierre
Chabloz for the “Rubber Campaign”
MORAES, Ana Carolina Albuquerque / Master Student / State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) / Brazil
Poster / Jean-Pierre-Chabloz / SEMTA / “Rubber Campaign”
This paper analyzes one of the posters designed by the Swiss
artist Jean-Pierre Chabloz during the period he worked for SEMTA
(Special Service of Mobilization of Workers for Amazonia) in 1943,
in the context of the Second World War. The poster, which covers
the moment of departure of migrants for Amazonia, will be analyzed
in comparison to photographs of that time which also depict
the subject.
1. Contextualization
In 1942, during the Second World War, Brazil and the U.S.A. signed
agreements in order to reactivate the rubber production in the native
plantations of Amazonia, so as to meet an enormous need for
this material by the allied armed forces. Having received huge financial
support from the Americans, the Vargas government committed
to undertake what became known as “the rubber program,”
a big plan which was expected to send several thousands of workers,
mainly from the Northeast region of Brazil, to work in rubber
production in the Amazon region. Among a number of organizations
created to operate this program, there was SEMTA (Special
Service of Mobilization of Workers for Amazonia), which held the
functions of mobilizing, selecting and routing workers to the Amazon
rainforest. Jean-Pierre Chabloz (1910-84), who was in charge
of the advertising division of SEMTA, produced rich material with
the purpose of persuading potential workmanship to migrate to
Amazonia and getting public support for the Vargas’ project. This
advertising material can be currently found at MAUC (Art Museum
of the Federal University of Ceará). Among this material, there are
four posters, which are studied in my Masters thesis research on
Visual Arts.
Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Jean-Pierre Chabloz studied at the
Geneva School of Fine Arts (1929-33), at the Florence Academy of
Fine Arts (1933-36) and at the Milan Royal Academy of Fine Arts
(1936-38). Due to the Second World War, he moved with his family
to Brazil in 1940. In late 1942, Chabloz was invited to engage
in the “rubber campaign” as an advertising designer of SEMTA. He
worked in this occupation from January to July 1943.
As the theme for this paper, I decided to analyze one of the four
referred posters, the second one designed by Chabloz for SEMTA.
This work of political advertising focuses on the moment of departure
of the recruited men, when they started their long journey
towards Amazonia, as it can be seen through the following pages.
2. Designing the poster
The idea for the poster Vai também para a Amazônia, protegido
pelo SEMTA (Go you too to Amazonia, protected by SEMTA) (fig.
1) seems to have been conceived in January 1943, as we learn
through notes in the first diary Chabloz wrote in the period he
worked for SEMTA. Through the reading of the same diary, we realize
that, besides the title, the poster originally had a subtitle, “Why
hesitate?”, which was suppressed in a later stage of creation of
this work, for reasons not mentioned by the artist.
Figure 1. Jean-Pierre Chabloz’s poster Go you too to
Amazonia, protected by SEMTA (1943). Lithograph, 67.3 x
111.3 cm, MAUC (photo by Ana Carolina Moraes).
A great sketch for the poster, done in charcoal and colored chalks,
would have been carried out between the first and the second day
of March, 1943. On March 5, Chabloz would have begun to prepare
the layout of the work, what he would keep doing for the following
fourteen days.
A shoeshine boy named Raimundo would have served as a model
for the main character of the poster, the man who, leaning against
a wall, watches the departure of his companions. Chabloz reported
having created, on March 7, a portrait of Raimundo in the pose of
that character.
The trucks would have been drawn on tracing paper on March 9,
and, on the following day, they were drawn in color on the poster
itself. Also on March 10, Chabloz would have amended the bust of
the main character of the composition, for having considered it too
short initially.
The title of the poster would have been drawn between the twelfth
and the fifteenth of March. On the seventeenth day of the same
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7