On the 13^th of December, in the expositive spaces of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Prague (Veletržní palace) was inaugurated the exhibition “VIETNAM: propaganda posters”, organized and produced by the Eleutheria foundation in the collaboration with the National Gallery in Prague.

The exposition aims to overview, through over 150 manifests, the entire artistic period related to the propagandistic production in Vietnam from the ’60s until the ’90s and to the artistic production of those who were called to contribute to the realization of the revolutionary project.

The exhibition itinerary, curated by the architect Ottaviano Maria Razetto, presents the works of art within an extremely rigid frame that tunes itself with the architecture of the exposition spaces of Veletržní palace. The manifests on show are organized in the strictly chronological order that enables the distinction between two clearly outlined productive phases in the evolution of the manifest of Vietnam propaganda.

The first section-the one that dates from the first ’60s up to 1975-is totally devoted to the battle for unification of the country and to the war with the USA it originated. This first period that extends itself until the end of the’70s - the last war, the one with Cambodia of Pol Pot, terminates only in the 1978-rappresents the country dismembered by the war but nevertheless full of hope for Vietnam united and independent. Vietnamese people, at those times as nowadays, lived mostly in the countryside and the information about what was going on at the front had to be passed by elementary means of immediate impact and easily understandable to all. What is being depicted is not only the country in war or the one that rhetorically announces its victory. The protagonists are peasants, children, mothers and if they are soldiers then they are nevertheless sons of the rural society itself.

Around the end of the ’70s the manifest continues to represent an important mean of expression. The country has finally reached its reunification following more than twenty years of wars, but it had come out of it exhausted and with problems of the nation to be reconstructed. The manifest - to which is dedicated the second part of the exhibition - that originally sang praises of the sentiments of the whole nation now attributes to the communist party the leadership within the Vietnamese society. The challenges to face are different: not the army of the invader (first France, later the USA and to finish Chinese neighbour itself), but the modernization.