Communist Posters

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This digital collection comprises selected materials from the following archival collection at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Russian Posters collection 1919-1989 and undated It didn’t stop at posters. All facets of media were used as political tools to install kitschy hope and pride into societal bloodstreams.

posters from the Soviet era are utterly unique These Polish posters from the Soviet era are utterly unique

Relatively inexpensive, compared with Soviet-era paintings, for example, older examples from the 1920s and 1930s can be found in poster shops around the world. Take note: it is easy for both professional collectors and hobbyists to get burned. A new travelling exhibition organised by The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford explores the art made during the tumultuous decade, and includes propaganda posters, revolutionary landscapes, papercuts and household objects. 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. Napoleon was defeated, that will be the case of the swelled-headed Hitler!" Reproduction of the poster from The State Historical Museum 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.By its very nature, propaganda distorts the truth or tells outright lies. It targets our basest impulses—fear and anger, flight or fight. While works of pure propaganda may pretend to make logical arguments, they eliminate nuance and oversimplify complicated issues to the point of caricature. These general tendencies hold true in every case, but nowhere, perhaps, is this gross exaggeration and fear mongering more evident than in times of war.

Communist Posters Photos and Premium High Res Pictures

The artists' work was so admired that the city of Krakow announced the first "International Exposition of the Poster" in 1898. Its organizer, Jan Wdowiszewski, believed that posters should combine artistic and utilitarian value, present a critical view of reality, and fit in at both art galleries and alleyways. There's no question that many Polish posters fit that description. 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. 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. 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.This poster depicts the Nazi triumph in the 1932 elections. The text reads, "The People Vote Slate 1—National Socialists." Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C./The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 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?

Communist Posters for Sale - Fine Art America

When paired with an educational system that would indoctrinate and form a “new-man” to embody the Soviet cause, it seemed that the Soviet propaganda machine--and by extension, the Soviets--was unstoppable. We now both work full time on Projekt 26. I do all of the copy and design, and Sylwia is the queen of sourcing. We are a bit of a two-man band and turn our hand to anything we need to! We're currently working on some really exciting collaborative projects, and we love that we never know where our adventure will take us. We've also met so many insanely lovely and creative people along the way. We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task." 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.Sylwia came to London about 16 years ago. She's always loved design but has worked all over the place. She was last seen working in corporate HR, which paid much better than vintage posters, but it never felt satisfying. The Russian Posters Collection is divided into three series spanning the years 1919 to 1989: 30 posters emphasizing the benefits of communism and the first "Five Year Plan" for workers, the achievements of the USSR under communism, religion as an enemy of the people, and the struggle against and decline of capitalism; 14 placards from the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR describing and depicting the strength of the country in industrial development, consumer goods, agricultural production, electrification, and the national welfare; and the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism and the problems facing capitalism; and last, ten posters from the "perestroika" period of the 1980s, most of which were exhibited in Moscow in 1988. In addition, the collection houses nine facsimiles of Russian posters from the 1920s-1930s. The posters have been digitized and are available online.