Communist Posters

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Older posters can fetch much higher prices. Pre-Second World War Soviet posters, in particular, are in demand. Though most Soviet posters were produced in print runs of 30,000 to 60,000, they were meant to be posted on walls and then disposed of, so few older examples have survived. This volume presents and analyzes communist posters from around the world. . . . The images are of high quality throughout. The specific posters were chosen to highlight important artistic and political features of this type of communication within the social and political milieu. Particularly compelling is the discussion of posters and dissent in Eastern Europe. . . . This volume is an important addition to the work on communication and legitimation in communist countries. . . . Recommended." The extraordinary life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, in her own words Frida: Fiery, fierce and passionate

Propaganda Posters That Are Insidiously Well Made 21 Vile Nazi Propaganda Posters That Are Insidiously Well Made

Russian and international collectors are enthralled by the history, subject matter and extraordinary graphic imagery of posters produced from 1917 to 1991. Prices have increased considerably since the Soviet Union broke up. Chisholm Larsson's founder, Robert Chisholm, says that posters bought in 1991 are probably worth three-times the amount today. In some cases they could be worth much more. An explosion of images accompanied the Russian Revolution. Posters were an important feature of the historical landscape: over 3,600 posters were designed and printed in millions of copies between 1918 and 1921, the period of Civil War when the Bolsheviks subdued counter-revolutionary insurgencies. During the Civil War, a period of economic devastation and destruction, somehow paper could be found for newspapers and for the lithographic production of posters. Artistic talent was mobilised from above to represent the Revolution unfolding in real time. Often highly stylized, posters were largely the work of trained poster artists and contain classics of early Soviet art. Boundaries between high art and mass-produced popular art, and art and propaganda, were fluid. The Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, an ardent supporter of the cause, oversaw teams of artists who created displays of posters in the shop windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). It has been argued that the political poster brought invention and imagination with the aim of appealing through the visual to the illiterate masses. Political posters had a pedagogic function in communicating a world view, sometimes with a practical purpose in mind. Poster artists strove to match images and social identities, as the historian Victoria Bonnell has shown in her book (Iconography of Power, 1997). They could also advertise recruitment to one side of the battle for or against the Bolshevik government. Napoleon was defeated, that will be the case of the swelled-headed Hitler!" Reproduction of the poster from The State Historical MuseumThese Nazi propaganda posters are as repugnant in their message as they are impressive in their artistic craftsmanship. Wikimedia Commons Stanisław Wyspiański, depicted in this self portrait, was a Polish poster maker at the end of the 19th century. But even though it's dead, it's certainly not forgotten. The Poster Museum in Poland houses over 50,000 vintage posters that guests can still enjoy today. Visitors can take a colorful walk down memory lane and experience some of the wildest movie posters ever created in the country. It didn’t stop at posters. All facets of media were used as political tools to install kitschy hope and pride into societal bloodstreams. During the Cultural Revolution traditional artists were condemned as counter-revolutionaries and their work destroyed. A new style of art was required that supported the Maoist line and served the worker, peasant and soldier.

Communist Posters, Ginsberg - The University of Chicago Press

But private entities did their share in the comic book war against Communism as well. Witness a particularly wild example, Is This Tomorrow?, above. Published by the “Catechetical Guild Educational Society” in St. Paul, MN, this 1947 comic implicates government regulation of business, social welfare programs, anti-religious sentiment, and “people giving up their silly ideas about ‘sacredness’ of life” in a fiendishly orchestrated plot to take over America. Workers who embrace Communist doctrine are little more than dupes and pawns. You can read the whole feverish scenario here. As soon as we started to research the history behind the posters, we realised we'd stumbled across something incredible. Incredibly, there were no other art dealers in the UK telling this story. Why did you want to bring this project to life?Gemma Correll turns her most iconic art into wearable pieces in new collab with Tatty Devine Read More

Communist Propaganda Posters Relive The Cold War With These 25 Communist Propaganda Posters

For those fascinated by Soviet graphic design and communist history, posters are an easy way to start a collection. Their topics touch on the environment, health, film and space exploration, as well as classic propaganda, depicting Lenin, Soviet workers and Stalin's five-year plans. Beautifully arrayed, the posters in this collection offer a comprehensive look at the broad range of visual works that have both expressed and fueled one of the most powerful political ideas of the modern era. Design Bridge and Partners shoots for the stars in new identity for The Archer School for Girls Read More Over the past few years, we have become friends with major gallery owners, collectors and poster experts in Poland, with who we work really closely. We're also meeting as many of the surviving artists as we can and the families of those who've sadly already died. What can you tell us about Projekt Mkt?

Why was this style not seen anywhere else?

As the perceived threat increased, so too did the scale of the monstrous caricatures. In the post-WWI era German and Norwegian posters above, Godzilla-sized Communists lay waste to entire cities. Below, in “Bolshevism Unmasked,” an example from the Second World War, the skeletal Communist destroyer straddles the entire globe. Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between. There are some hungry, aggressive poster collectors and you're speaking to one of them,” joked Dr Sergo Grigorian, a Russian collector based in London who has over 2000 political Soviet posters.

Racial harmony in a Marxist utopia: how the Soviet Union

Often, poster makers were hired in-house by theaters, operas, and museums. This resulted in many unique perspectives on popular films. More often than not, Polish artists avoided a "literal translation of the plot" and instead sought to express the overall mood of the movie. This collection of 20th-century Russian posters spans almost the entire history of the Soviet Union (1917-1991). It can be divided into three main series, each representing distinct eras in the history of Communist political advertising. The General Political Poster series features works from the earliest days of Soviet power and is especially strong for the late 1920s, a period that coincides with the "cultural revolution" of I. V. Stalin. The Twenty-Second Communist Party Congress series includes electioneering placards from the early 1960s that graphically illustrate N. S. Khrushchev's promise to catch up and overtake the capitalist West. The Perestroika Era series, which rounds out this collection, is an assemblage of posters from the late 1980s that offers a poignant reminder of the promises and perils of the period of "restructuring" (perestroika) and "openness" (glasnost) under M. S. Gorbachev. Representing socialism as an ape-like demon strangling some sort of goddess of “prosperity,” this striking piece of poster art sets the tone for almost all of the anti-Communist propaganda to come in the wake of the Russian Revolution. At least since this early graphic salvo, Communists and socialists have generally been depicted as terrifying monsters. See, for example, an early, post-WWI example of Russian anti-Communist propaganda above, portraying the Communist threat as an apocalyptic horseman of death. They also shunned conventional layouts and hierarchy by integrating type and graphics rather than viewing them as separate elements. It may have been partly because fonts weren't available, so every letter was hand-drawn. Poland has a long history with posters. Starting in the 1890s, artists would produce colorful posters to promote art exhibitions, theater performances, and ballets. They mixed popular styles like Japanism, Jugendstil, Secessionist, and Cubism with traditional symbolism and Polish folklore. This often led to thought-provoking and unique designs.Soviet poster from 1948. The captions read ‘Under capitalism’ and ‘Under socialism’. Photograph: Wayland Rudd Archive/Yevgeniy Fiks/Flint Sylwia and I only knew each other in passing as our kids were in the same class at primary school. I popped over to her house to drop something off, stayed for a cup of tea – which I drank on her sofa under Tadeusz Jodlowski's 1979 circus poster 'Nine Lions' – and the rest is history. We got chatting about the poster: for me, it was love at first sight. And the idea for Projekt 26 was born.