Smoke Less, Live More - Israel Cancer Association (1966)
Year: 1966
Format: Poster Stamp
Illustrator: Cyla Menusi (b.1930)
Client: Israel Cancer Association
Details: This anti-smoking poster stamp was produced for the Israel Cancer Association. The text translates roughly to “smoke less, live more”.
The signature reads צילה מנוסי. She is credited as Cyla Menusi or Menusy in most design annuals (alternative spelling translations I have seen are Tsilah, Czela or Tzila, with last name Manosi or Manusi).
Menusi was born in 1930 in Krakow, Poland. Her religious Jewish family immigrated to Israel and she grew up in Jerusalem.
She studied painting at the Bezalel School of Art in 1947-1951, before moving to London to study design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and at the Polytechnic Institute under the guidance of Tom Eckersley. She worked as a saleswoman for the well-known British retailer Marks and Spencer, for whom she designed what is described as a symbol or trademark. She also worked as a narrator in a Hebrew programme for the BBC.
Menusi lived in New York from 1954, where she designed greeting cards and postcards. In 1958 she married writer, journalist and lyricist Didi Menusi. She was married to him until his death in 2013, and the couple have three children.
The couple returned to Israel in 1961, where Menusi formed a design partnership with former Bezalel classmate חוה אורנן (Hava Ornan, b.1930 in Czechoslovakia), creating stamps, posters and more. They worked on a number of stamp designs for the Philatelic Service during the 1960s, including 'The Holocaust and Heroism' in 1962. Ornan herself was the sole-surviving member of her family, after being taken to the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.
In the 1970s, Cyla and Didi Menusi worked together to create cartoons that were published in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. In 2010, she and her husband were jointly awarded the Golden Pencil Award by the Israeli Cartoon and Comics Museum.