Curator, Juliet Kinchin: Fré Cohen was an extremely prolific designer in interwar Amsterdam. We're looking at a cover for a serial encyclopedia for young people called What is that? And I think of the girl who's lying sprawled across a carpet of flowers as like Fre Cohen with this endless curiosity about the world and this commitment to self-improvement and the value of education, particularly for girls. You can see her imaginative life as she's engaged in this encyclopedia.
There's an airplane in the top left corner. And below it, a gymnast vaulting off an electricity pylon, very much engaged in the modern world and the future, and with such energy. And you can see the splashes of red and the red lettering, very much indicative of her socialist politics and affiliation.