Gallery Edition – `Ware spies! Keep it under your hat by Bert Thomas – 44×68 Interior Architectural Study

Curatorial Narrative In the midst of World War II, Bert Thomas’s “Ware spies! ‘Keep it under your hat'” emerges as a paradigmatic example of propaganda art, oscillating between the didactic and the decorative. Executed between 1939 and 1946, this artwork inhabits the threshold of modernity, where the avant-garde tendencies of Art Deco and Modernist design styles converge with the imperative of wartime messaging. Thomas’s soft brushwork and chromatic structure, characterized by a palette of red, white, black, and green, evoke an atmosphere of restraint and vigilance, underscoring the importance of discretion in a time of heightened surveillance.When enlarged to 44×68 inches, the artwork’s spatial depth and compositional structure assume a newfound monumentality, imbuing the surrounding environment with a sense of gravitas. The red accents, reminiscent of alarm signals, punctuate the space with a staccato rhythm, while the green and b