White horses leap across a night sky; beneath them a dark planet hangs ringed with light, and four lattice radio masts rise from the bottom of the page like a fence around the world. The state radio is advertising itself — in wartime, to a country it addresses every day.
The banner reads «FORZE DEL LAVORO ITALIANO: AL SERVIZIO DEL PAESE IN ARMI» — the campaign formula with the war bolted on. The copy is the most openly political in the whole collection: from goal to goal, it says, the E.I.A.R. follows «il cammino ascensionale della patria fascista e del regime» and spreads from its antennas «la grande voce dell’Italia imperiale». At the foot, in letters cut like masonry: E.I.A.R.
The monopoly at the microphone
The Ente Italiano per le Audizioni Radiofoniche held the exclusive concession for radio broadcasting in Italy from 1927 to 1944, ran the country’s first experimental television transmissions around Rome between 1938 and 1940, and carried the regime’s official programmes throughout the fascist period; its general direction sat in Turin. It is the only body in this collection whose product was the propaganda itself — the other sheets bought space in the illustrated press, while the E.I.A.R. owned the airwaves the same households listened to. After the war its successor became RAI. The «paese in armi» banner dates the sheet to the war years.
Marks
The collector attributes the design to Erberto Carboni — who did work extensively in Italian advertising of the period — reading an EC monogram near the masts; on our scan only tiny stacked marks at the right edge appear, which do not resolve into a monogram. The sheet is published without an attribution.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- E.I.A.R. — exclusive radio concession 1927–1944, the experimental television of 1938–40, the Turin direction
- The sheet itself, for the banner and the copy.
