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Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level C , Case MM, Shelf 2

Under the Banner of Lenin for Socialist Construction

Poster
1930 (published)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This poster celebrates the rapid industrialisation that had begun under the first Five Year Plan of 1928. It portrays Joseph Stalin as Lenin's legitimate successor as the leader of the Soviet Union. But although its message was orthodox, the poster has the kind of dynamic composition that Stalin increasingly condemned. He called it 'formalism', and it became an artistic crime. Just after the poster was made, in the early 1930s, Stalinism froze design into the banal and rigid formulas of Socialist Realism. The poster is photomontaged. Gustav Klucis was one of the Constructivists, a group of artists who embraced the original aims of the Soviet Revolution of 1917.


Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleUnder the Banner of Lenin for Socialist Construction (manufacturer's title)
Materials and techniques
Colour lithograph on paper
Brief description
Gustav Klutsis. Under the Banner of Lenin for Socialist Construction. Political poster published by the State Publishing House, USSR, 1930
Physical description
Poster
Dimensions
  • Height: 97.2cm
  • Width: 70.2cm
2015: Framed 124 x 88.5 x 3.5 cm.
Production typeMass produced
Subjects depicted
Summary
This poster celebrates the rapid industrialisation that had begun under the first Five Year Plan of 1928. It portrays Joseph Stalin as Lenin's legitimate successor as the leader of the Soviet Union. But although its message was orthodox, the poster has the kind of dynamic composition that Stalin increasingly condemned. He called it 'formalism', and it became an artistic crime. Just after the poster was made, in the early 1930s, Stalinism froze design into the banal and rigid formulas of Socialist Realism. The poster is photomontaged. Gustav Klucis was one of the Constructivists, a group of artists who embraced the original aims of the Soviet Revolution of 1917.
Bibliographic reference
Tamara Kudryatvseva, Circling the square: avant-garde porcelain from revolutionary Russia London: Fontanka, 2004. 190p: ill. (chiefly col.) ISBN: 0954309510 (hbk.), 0954309522 (pbk.).
Collection
Accession number
E.404-1988

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Record createdFebruary 24, 2003
Record URL
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