RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVIST POSTERS

Elena Barkhatova

11 x 16 softcover book with 216 pages and 216 color plates, primarily full-page framable reproductions gorgeously printed by the Krasnyi Proletarii-Printing House Moscow. Introduction and list of illustrations and biographical notes by Elena Barkhatova. Oversized, comprehensive anthology that features posters from the 1920s to the 1930s, chronicling the collision between Constructivism and Commercial art. Highly recommended.

Exploration of the one place and time in the 20th century (except, briefly, for the linkage of Italian Fascism and Futurism) when radical art actually did become the house style of a revolution.

Includes biographical information and work by Vladimir Akhmetev, Nikolai Akimov, Petr Aslanov, Grigorii Bershadskii, A.. Z. Blik, A. Blokhin, Grigorii Borisov, Dimitrii Bulanov, Bykov, Aleksandr Deineka, Mikhail Dlugach, Mechislav Dobrokovskii, Nikolai Dolgorukov, B. Dvornikov, Vasilii Elkin, Aleksei Gan, Iosif Gerasimovich, V. K. Gessner, Vera Gitsevich, Yulii Gombarg, Yakov Guminer, Sergei Igumnov, Vladimir Kaabak, Nikolai Khomov, Ivan Kluin, Gustav Klucis, A. Koliunovich, Komissarenko, Fedor Konnov, V. Korshpokis, A. Kuzmin, Elizaveta Lavinskaia, Anton Lavinskii, Vladimir Lebedev, Aleskei Levin, El Lissitzky, Max Litvak, F. Lupach, Vladimir Luppian, V. Malinin, Vladimir Maiakovskii, S. Meltser, Yurii Merkulov, Dmitrii Mitrokhin, Aleksandr Naumov, E. Nekrasov, Nikolai Nikonov, Poskrebyshev, Nikolai Prusakov, Alexandr Rodchenko, Vladimir Roskin, Yakov Rudlevskii, S. Semenov, Sergei Senken, Yulian Shutskii, Vladimir Stenberg, Georgii Stenberg, Varvara Stepanova, Dimitrii Tarkov, Yu Yaroshenko, Grigorii Zamskii, Zhigunov, and Petr Zhukov.

In a country where illiteracy was endemic, film played a critical role in the conversion of the masses to the new social order. Graphic design, particularly as applied in the political placard, was a highly useful instrument for agitation, as it was both direct and economical. The symbiotic relationship of the cinema and the graphic arts would result in a revolutionary new art form: the film poster.

The Stenberg brothers produced a large body of work in a multiplicity of mediums, initially achieving renown as Constructivist sculptors and later working as successful theatrical designers, architects, and draftsmen; in addition, they completed design commissions that ranged from railway cars to women's shoes. Their most significant accomplishment, however, was in the field of graphic design, specifically, the advertising posters they created for the newly burgeoning cinema in Soviet Russia.

The film posters of the Stenberg bothers, produced from 1923 until Georgii's untimely death in 1933, represent an uncommon synthesis of the philosophical, formal, and theoretical elements of what has become known as the Russian avant-garde. These posters, radical even from current perspectives, are not the consequence of some brief flame of eccentric artistic creativity, but rather a consolidation of the Stenbergs' own eclectic experience‹possible only in this era‹and the formal artistic inventions of the time. Their intimate knowledge of contemporary film theory, Suprematist painting, Constructivism, and avant-garde theater, as well as their skill in the graphic arts, was essential to the genesis of these works.

Spreads from this volume can be viewed here.

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