Item #446 [ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]. I. Vaisfeld, A., Mikhailov.
[ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]
[ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]
[ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]
[ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]

[ART PROPAGANDA] Plakatno-kartinnaya agitatsiya na putyakh perestroiki [i.e. Poster and Painting Propaganda In Service of Re-Building]

Moscow: Izogiz, 1932. Item #446

84 pp.: ill. 21x15 cm. In original constructivist wrapper with usage of poster by Yang on the front cover. Very good. Small tears of the spine, text block slightly detached from the cover in the upper part, owner’s signature on the t.p.

First edition. One of 3000 copies. Very rare.

This edition was created on the brink of a new era - in 1932 all literary and art organizations were banned. Posters reviewed here are of the 1920s but the anti-formalist tone of the edition is lucid. Among shown examples are works by Moor, Klutsis, Cheremnykh, Gromitsky, Nevezhin, Yang, Baskin, Mizin, Liushik, Svarog and others. In 1920s and 1930s poster was a massive propaganda tool and a visual guide not only for political reasons but posters also were supposed to promote all kinds of things to a newly forged Soviet man: safety at construction and other workplaces, hygiene and a healthy lifestyle, education, reading, hard work, etc. The technique of photomontage was massively used in posters’ production, it was marching through the country until 1931 when party’s decree ‘On Poster Literature’ was adopted. It established a system of rigid ideological review involving not only official censorship, but also students of the Institute of Red Professors. Thus, the poster was one of the first subjected to strict regulation by the party authorities, artistic disputes ended in total ideological control.

The book is one of the first complex critical publications of some of the undoubted masters of 1920s poster. ‘LEF’ is used only in negative sense, as well as most of the artistic groups of 1920s. Works by Gustav Klutsis analysed particularly thorough in the chapter ‘Proletarian and all allied tendencies’, where his works have been given some credit, although the general line is that his art is formalist and he is accused of ‘using photomontage for the sake of photomontage’. Author is
criticizing the core of Soviet poster designing schools, accusing Deineka in the lack of depth, Deni is accused of not being clear enough in his propaganda attempts, Dmitri Moor is called ‘vulgar’. It’s important to remember that both Moor and Deni never has been withdrawn from the Soviet poster mainstream and have been regarded classics throughout their lives. To see the author criticizing them alongside with Klutsis, whose career was about to break off is very unorthodox.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the unusual short lived technique ’mass paintings’ - oil paintings that were also replicated in big amounts (average print run was 60 thousand copies).

Overall an important piece which depicted the end of Russian art groups and proclaiming new poster reality.

Worldcat locates a copy in NYPL.

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