Sluiter, a major Dutch graphic designer and political caricaturist, believed in simple lines, flat basic colors, and prominent lettering. And as a political caricaturist by avocation, Sluiter’s posters typically relate their graphic message with tongue in cheek. That wouldn’t be the case, however, in this thunderous design for a 1916 Amsterdam Olympic Day organized to prove that the Olympic spirit was alive and well, despite the fact that the Berlin Games had been canceled because of the First World War. This Olympics was still considered to be the Sixth Games of the Modern Olympiad, because as Pierre de Coubertin, the reviver of the Olympic Games, stated, “If an Olympiad is not celebrated, its number remains.” Rare!
Senefelder, Amsterdam
literature: Olympics, p. 23; Olympic Posters, 15; Sluiter, 36; PAI-LXXXVIII, 3