FILM POSTERS OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

The Russ­ian avant-garde film posters of the mid-1920’s to early 1930’s are unlike any film posters ever cre­ated. Although the period of artis­tic free­dom in the Soviet Union was brief, these pow­er­ful, star­tling images remain among the most bril­liant and imag­i­na­tive posters ever con­ceived. The Russ­ian film poster artists exper­i­mented with the same inno­v­a­tive cin­e­matic tech­niques used in the films they were adver­tis­ing, such as extreme close-ups, unusual angles and dra­matic pro­por­tions. They mon­taged dis­parate ele­ments, such as adding pho­tog­ra­phy to lith­o­g­ra­phy, and jux­ta­posed the action from one scene with a char­ac­ter from another. They col­ored human faces with vivid col­ors, elon­gated and dis­torted body shapes, gave ani­mal bod­ies to humans and turned film cred­its into an inte­gral part of the design. There were no rules, except to fol­low one’s imag­i­na­tion.

The 1917 Rev­o­lu­tion changed life in Rus­sia polit­i­cally, socially and artis­ti­cally. Art became regarded as an impor­tant force in shap­ing the future of the new State. Slo­gans such as ‘Art into Life’ and ‘Art into Tech­nol­ogy’ expressed the pop­u­lar belief that art had the power to trans­form lives on every level. It was a time of artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion, a kind of spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion caused by the charged atmos­phere and the rad­i­cal changes in art and life. Diverse art styles, such as Con­struc­tivism and Real­ism, Ana­lyt­i­cal Art and Pro­le­tar­ian Art, devel­oped simul­ta­ne­ously and, seem­ingly irrec­on­cil­ably, together. Bold new direc­tions in art, includ­ing supre­ma­tism, non-objectivism and cubo­fu­tur­ism, emerged in this fer­tile period of change.
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