Soviet Avant-Garde
The years following the First World War saw major changes in all of the most powerful countries of the world, with empires collapsing, ideologies competing, and new cultural movements vying for their place.
But nowhere changed as rapidly and comprehensively as Russia/the Soviet Union. In the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet Union underwent a cultural shift that redefined the meaning of the word ‘radical’.
This was most apparent in its new ideas in art – and, in particular, with Soviet Avant-Garde movies and their posters. These posters, which were ostensibly promotional tools for films, took on lives of their own, showcasing the strange new places where Soviet artists had found themselves working in.
Many of the posters below are considered definitive works of Soviet art, and most of them have had a longer legacy than the movies they were designed to promote.
Let’s take a look at 11 posters that helped mark this radical art movement.
The Man with a Movie Camera - Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, 1929
The Man with the Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov, is a quintessential filmmaker’s film, noted for the fact that it was one of the first films to employ new techniques such as slow and fast motion, split screen, and montage.
The film’s accompanying poster, which was designed by Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg (you’ll be reading their names a lot in this article), gives a taste of how ambitious Soviet Avant-Garde artists were.
Look at the disassembled body parts pressed flat onto the poster like a collage. Look at the dizzying high-rise architecture. Look at how the typography spirals rather than moving from left to right. This is as far from a ‘standard’ Western film poster as you can get.
The Man with a Movie Camera – Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
The Communard’s Pipe – Anatoly Belsky
The Communard's Pipe - Anatoly Belsky, 1929
One of the most revered and important Soviet graphic designers, Anatoly Belsky became a leading film poster designers in the 1920s.
Belsky came to the fore at the same time as Soviet filmmakers began to really utilise the possibilities of montage (like Vertov, mentioned above). Montage also had a massive influence on poster designs, as it offered new opportunities in terms of perspective, proportions, and how much you could get away with presenting to the viewer on the poster (many artists and filmmakers alike had previously conservative with their poster designs, but montage – to put it bluntly – encouraged them to weird).
Belsky’s poster for The Communard’s Pipe is inventive enough as it is, with human bodies coming through the tendril of smoke emerging from the pipe – but everything from the proportions of the people depicted here, to the almost blanched colouring of the young boy Jules who is smoking the pipe, begs your eyes to studying it in-depth.
Turksib - Semyon Semyonov-Menes, 1929
With the Soviet Union covering a greater landmass than any other country on earth, a lot of its visual culture dealt with new ways of linking the far expanses of that landmass.
1929 film Turksib was a Soviet documentary focused on the building of a railway through Tashkent in Uzbekistan, to Novosibirsk in Siberian Russia (‘Turksib’ is a portmanteau for Turkestan-Siberian).
Semyonov-Menes’ film poster perfectly captures elements of the Constructivism art movement (which was closely associated with Soviet Avant-Garde). The Constructivists could be abstract, but their art reflected modern industry, modern technology, and the populace’s relationship with industry and technology.
Appropriately enough, in Semyonob-Menes’ poster, the body is literally melded with the infrastructure.
Turksib – Semyon Semyonov-Menes
The Girl with the Hatbox – Semyon Semyonov-Menes
The Girl with the Hatbox - Semyon Semyonov-Menes, 1927
The Girl with the Hatbox was a 1927 silent film that blended romance and comedy. A satire, it cast a critical eye at contemporary Soviet problems like housing shortages, the bureaucracy around getting adequate housing, and some of the economic confusion that arose from Lenin’s mixed-market economy in the early days of the Soviet Union.
The bold colours, sans-serif typography, and striking textboxes are all really eye-catching in this image, but what’s also interesting is the ‘man’ in this poster. There’s a pipe, a top hat, a long coat, and a cane – but the body of the man is conspicuously absent. The text translates as ‘Where is the man? He has left to go see ‘The Girl with the Hatbox’. Perhaps an indication that designers were using their posters for tongue-in-cheek jokes as well as radical art!
Five minutes - Nikolai Prusakov, 1928
Five Minutes was a propaganda film based on a moment on January 24, 1924, when the Soviet Union held a five-minute silence to mourn the death of Lenin. In the film, an American businessman ignores the moment of national mourning as he runs around trying to secure a business deal.
Viewers of this poster can note his sharp, almost villainous features, as well as his monocle and top hat (the symbols of any evil Western American capitalist…)
This poster, as with many of the others listed here, show the clear political underpinnings of much of Soviet Avant-Garde art.
Toulouse Lautrec – Peter Max
The Punishment – Nikolai Prusakov & Grigori Borisov
The Punishment - Nikolai Prusakov & Grigori Borisov, 1926
It’s always worth reminding ourselves that the films of the Soviet era were very much black and white. The limitations of this fact meant that artists attempted the bring as much life and colour to their promotional posters as possible.
Prusakov and Borisov brought electrifying colours and shapes to this poster, as well as a really effective use of photomontage.
The Punishment of Shirvanskaya was a silent adventure film centred around a ‘Soviet negro’, played by the Soviet-Moroccan actor and acrobat Kador Ben-Salim, who performs wonders of strength and acrobatic skill. Undoubtedly, its poster won viewers over by finding unique ways of presenting the main character’s strength (as well as just showing that this movie was, well, a good bit of fun).
Battleship Potemkin – Alexander Rodchenko
Battleship Potemkin - Alexander Rodchenko, 1925
Alexander Rodchenko was fervent in his support for new forms of artistic expression in Soviet Russia, believing that radical ideas were essential to captivating the masses. In his work as an artist, designer, and poster maker, he became one of Constructivism’s most important figures.
Battleship Potemkin is also one of the most famous films from the 1920s Soviet era. It tells the story of a mutiny on a tsarist warship by the ship’s crew – a clear example of Communist propaganda in Soviet cinema.
Rodchenko’s posters for the film are as iconic as the movie itself. Look at how they emphasis newness – new geometric proportions, and new perspectives on warships and weaponry, all of it for a film which showcased new revolutionary opportunities for the proletariat.
In Spring – Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg
In Spring - Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg, 1929
In discussing the brilliance of the Stenbergs’ In Spring poster, it’s worth pointing to what Vladimir Stenberg once said about their art. He explained in an interview: “Ours are eye-catching posters are designed to shock. We deal with the material in a free manner…turning figures upside-down; in short, we employ everything that can make a busy passerby stop in their tracks.”
In many ways, this is all that needs to be said about their work. Beyond the animated typography, the inventive cropping, and the unusual placing of human bodies on this poster – the artists believed in capturing the attention of passersby above all else.
The Private Life of Peter Vinograd - Anatoly Belsky, 1934
One of the definitive posters of the Soviet Avant-Garde era, it’s rightly included here because of its context and its legacy.
The context is that the Soviet Avant-Garde movement was in decline by 1934, with Stalinism and social realism taking a firmer hold on the cultural mindset. But Belsky was a seasoned Avant-Garde artist by that stage, and with this poster, he showed that his work could still pack a punch. The absorbing but chilling face of the woman looms much larger than the curious chaos of the diving board and the man seeming to fall from the sky.
The legacy is that this poster is proof of how iconic many of the Soviet Avant-Garde poster designs were for art history – the poster is internationally recognisable, while the film itself is merely a footnote in collective memory.
The Private Life of Peter Vinograd – Anatoly Belsky
Symphony of a Big City – Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg
Symphony of a Big City - Vladimir & Georgii Stenberg, 1928
The Stenbergs once again, with another poster that captured the dynamic possibilities of Constructivism for Soviet artists.
A reminder that Constructivist artists blended industry with the human body in their work – so what could be more appropriate for a film titled Symphony of a Big City than to have a man with a megaphone for his ear, pipes and screws for his arms, a watch for his neck, and a camera lens for his eye?
Politically, it emphasised the modern Soviet idea of the primacy and possibilities of cities and innovation.
Journey to Mars - Nikolai Prusakov and Grigori Borisov, 1926
A wonderful, evocative design, Nikolai Prusakov and Grigory Borisov highlighted the futurism aspects of Soviet Avant-Garde in their work.
If the Soviet Union was about new ways of looking at the world, new ways of imagining the future, and a new relationship between humanity and space, then this image was suitably forward-thinking. Here, space isn’t dark or scary, it’s alive with colour and beauty, while men and their machines are, notably, pointed toward exploring it.
Journey to Mars – Nikolai Prusakov and Grigori Borisov
A Radical New Way of Looking at the World
The Soviet Union was in uncharted waters in the 1920s – with its leaders trying to construct a society in a way which had never been done before.
In their attempts, artists became important. Films – and their posters – could showcase the incredible artistic possibilities of this new society, while also playing a propaganda role in selling the new political systems to the masses.
Artists did all this. And, as it transpired, they played a part in creating one of the most radical artist movements of the 20th Century.
