Rajie Cook (1930 – 2021)
2008
Digital pigment print
Gift of the artist
2020.24.25
Inspired by Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
The son of Christian Palestinian immigrants, Rajie Cook had a successful career in advertising and always intended that his art carry a message of peace in the ongoing conflict in his family’s homeland. In 1967 he established an advertising firm with Don Shanosky. They were hired to create a system of public signage in preparation for the U.S. bicentennial celebrations. The pictographs they devised to designate restrooms, elevators, stairs, and other facilities are now universally recognized and incorporated in public spaces such as airports, train stations, highways and historic sites worldwide. Later in his career, Rajie Cook encountered the work of Joseph Cornell and began making box-shaped assemblages containing found objects
This poster is one of many he created in response to the Israeli-Palestinian war. Here he uses imagery from Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, a response to the bombing of a town in the Basque region of Spain prior to the Second World War. Rajie Cook donated close to 30 of his Palestinian works to Georgetown in 2020.