[Oyvind Fahlstrom] Sketch for World Map Part 1 (Americas, Pacific) [with] Liberated Guardian Vol. 3, No. 1

Oyvind Fahlstrom et al

New York: Liberated Guardian, 1972. 11 x 17 in. Offset on newsprint. 16 pp. [with] Large print. 34 x 40 in. Offset lithograph on newsprint.

The May 1972 issue of this short-lived radical newspaper, with Oyvind Fahlstrom’s Sketch for World Map Part 1 (Americas, Pacific).

The Liberated Guardian was founded in the Spring of 1970, when a group of workers at the long-running leftist paper, the National Guardian, went on strike, occupied, the Guardian offices, and decided to start a new, collectively-run newspaper. Liberated Guardian took a strong, armed-struggle line and supported militancy around the world, writing positively about the Black Panthers, the Castro regime, and liberation struggles around the world. During it’s three-year run, the paper was released irregularly; in 1973, publishing stopped after another staff conflict.

A preliminary study for his later, brightly colored World Map, Sketch for World Map Part 1 (Americas, Pacific), was produced in a unnumbered edition, though scholars believe there to be less than 300 extant. A complex, interconnected work with a cartoon-like style, this map is not geographic but instead represents the political, military and economic expansion of the United States across the world in the latter half of the 20th Century. The deep web of information is suggestive of the interweavings of the dark imperialist interests of global capitalism, a theme explored in even greater detail decades later by Mark Lombardi and others.

This issue of Liberated Guardian includes reports on the aftermath of the Attica rebellion, Vacaville Prison, the war in Vietnam (“We’re on the Side of the VietCong!”), H. Rap Brown, I Work Kuen, and more.

Light toning commensurate with the age of newsprint; otherwise, in remarkably clean condition. The Fahlstrom print is folded in sixths to be tipped into the paper, as issued. Near fine.