STAN KROL

Published 1951, USA

Size: 23.4" X 38.6"

Description: Puncture hole in upper middle of poster.

Description:

A great poster of the aviation company British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) from Polish born designer Stan Krol.
Krol had immigrated to Britain in the 1940’s and began a career as a graphic designer shortly after the end of the Second World War.  His work as a freelance graphic designer can be seen for such venerable British institutions as the Post Office, National Savings Bank and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
The BOAC, which eventually became British Airways was an aviation company that was created in 1940 when Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. merged and then took over British South American Airways in 1949.
Of note, BOAC was the first airline to introduce a passenger jet, the Havilland Comet, to is airline service.  As such, if the period between the two World Wars is considered the Golden Age of Aviation where airplane development occurred at a feverish pace from wooden made biplanes to metal monoplanes, the post World War aviation could considered as the onset to the Golden Age of Travel.  With aeronautic advancements, longer routes were made possible that effectively shrunk our concept of our world view.  Whereas travel destinations were limited in the past in scope, the post world war opened up the skies to a multitude of destinations to the curious masses.
Krol’s poster is also of interest beyond the linkages between the continents that it depicts.  The very fact that this poster is designed by a polish immigrant for a venerable British institution on how it sees the world indicates that theses linkages go beyond simple travel.  Immigration and migrations of population, whether by choice or by force,  are still concepts that are part of our modern world and affect, by consequence, our world view and our view of ourselves within this world.