1968 Los Angeles

An interesting bird's-eye-view poster of Los Angeles, California by the illustrator Gene Holtan. The print offers a rebuke to the massive freeway project undertaken by the city between the years 1940 and 1970. Above the city, the sun looks down in distaste with a clothespin pinching its nose as protection from the smell of pollution and smog. A web of highways runs through a myriad of iconic buildings of Los Angeles such as the Capitol Records Tower, Griffith Observatory, Watts Towers Arts Center, the Theme Building at LAX International Airport, Hollywood Bowl, and Los Angeles City Hall, which rises above the skyline. Holtan even includes a highway that ends over the Pacific Ocean with cars carelessly driving off into the sea.  Gene Holtan was born 1930 in Saskatchewan Canada. After studying and not graduating from the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary, Alberta, he went on to study and not graduate from Art Center in Los Angeles. Financial demands of family life for