Enlarge image
Catalogue information
LastDodo number
5306463
Area
Drawings / paintings
Title
The Gay Divorcee, or never a dull moment!
Artist
Art object
Art Movement / style
Genre
Theme
Material
Technique used
Colouring
Dimensions
41 x 32 cm
Series / hero
Collection / set
Number
Addition to number
Year
1955
Country
Language
Details
Original editorial cartoon on card in pencil, 1955, probably published in the New York Journal, shows Josip Broz Tito the leader of Yugoslavia as the ‘gay divorcee’. In May 1955 Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin paid a visit to Yugoslavia bearing ‘gifts’. Tito is showing them out of the door while looking lovingly at the figure in the shiny sports car waiting outside representing ‘NATO aid’. In 1948 Yugoslavia had been expelled from Cominform by Stalin since Tito would not allow his country to fall under Soviet control. Estranged from the Soviet Union, Tito turned to the west for economic aid, and the west obliged by providing aid via the Marshall Plan. After Stalin's death in 1953, the new soviet leader Khrushchev sought reconciliation with Tito, and this was the purpose of the 1955 visit to Belgrade. Tito and Yugoslavia were re-admitted into the international brotherhood of socialist states, although relations between the two countries were never completely rebuilt. Yugoslavia would continue to follow a neutral (non-aligned) course between west and east, and was not tempted into the western sphere of influence as the cartoonist seems to be suggesting. The ‘four power parley’ refers to the upcoming Geneva summit of July 1955. Card size 41 x 32 cm (16 x 12 inch), image size 38 x 20 cm, caption in pencil on upper border, printing instructions on lower border, signed lower right. Some liquid stains in lower border, otherwise in very good condition.