Views and Re-Views: Soviet Political Posters and Cartoons

LĚTKAR

Russian/Ukranian

"Prepare to resist the growing reaction! Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat!"

c. 1930

Lithograph

27¾ x 21

In the captions artists' titles are in italics, descriptive titles are in roman, and inscriptions taken from the artwork are in quotation marks.

Dimensions are in inches.

EL LISSITZKY

Russian, 1890-1941

"Everything for the front! Everything for victory!"

1942

Lithograph

35¼ x 23¼

KAREL LUDWIG and FRANTIŠEK GROSS

Unknown and Czech: 1909-1985, respectively

"Greetings to the Red Army"

1945

Lithograph

37½ x 24¾

VLADIMIR LUPPIAN

"The Third [Communist] International"

c. 1920

Lithograph

21¾ x 13½

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY

Russian, 1893-1930

ROSTA Window series #42

February 1921

Sowing Campaign: Let's fulfill the decree!

Hand-cut stencils with watercolor pigment

15¾ x 16¼ to 17 x 16¾ each

"1. Everyone fulfilled the Soviet plan"

"2. I wasted no time and worked with dedication"

"3. For this I was immediately rewarded"

"4. With a prize and a decoration!"

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY and MIKHAIL CHEREMNYKH

Russian: 1893-1930 and 1890-1962, respectively

ROSTA Window series #81

March 1921

All for Farming Equipment Repair Week!

Hand-cut stencils with watercolor pigment

20½ x 13½ to 21¼ x 14¼ each

"1. Those are the weapons our factories used to produce"

"2. Now we have a new kind of weapon to use"

"3. For Spring's arrival we must prepare —"

"4. Get the plough and harrow in full repair"

"5. Worker! A new front has opened"

"6. Quickly, go fix the farming equipment!"

IURII MERKULOV and NIKOLAI CHOMOV

Unknown and Ukrainian: 1903-1974, respectively

"Fulfill the five-year plan not in five years, but in four"

1930

Lithograph

21¾ x 13½

DMITRI MOOR

The flamboyant Dmitri Moor may have been the most gifted of the early Soviet graphic artists. Well versed in modern art and folk art traditions, he stumbled into a career in the arts in 1907, when a newspaper editor saw his sketches of Tsarist ministers. His early works were allegorical — with dragons and the figure of death standing in for capitalists and imperialists. Works from the twenties, like his famous recruitment poster entitled Have You Enrolled as a Volunteer? were direct and representational. He was known to fellow artists as the "commissar of propagandistic revolutionary art."

Moor was born in 1883 in Novocherkassk as Dmitri Orlov. He initially signed his drawings "Dor" but changed to "Mor" when a journalist by the same name objected, and finally to "Moor." Moor never received formal artistic training and studied physics, mathematics, and law at Moscow University. He joined the revolutionary movement against the Tsar while in school, publishing sketches of Tsarist ministers in a local evening paper and then in many of the leading illustrated satirical journals in Moscow. During World War I, he produced patriotic lubki (wood block prints) that showed the heroic deeds of a fictionalized soldier on the front. Moor began making political posters after the October Revolution, creating more than 50 over the course of the Civil War. By 1920 his cartoons were appearing in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party. He produced political posters less frequently in the 1920s and 30s, but returned to the medium during World War II.

Moor was also a leading figure in Soviet art education, teaching the Kukryniksy as well as other artists/illustrators of the younger generation. He received the title of Honored Art Worker and was elected to the presidium of the Union of Revolutionary Poster Workers in 1931 as well as the Moscow City Soviet in 1935. Moor died in Moscow in 1946.

DMITRI MOOR

Russian, 1883-1946