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A graphic metamorphosis like no other
The graphics of Soviet film posters uttered the new revolutionary visual grammar and it dazzled the world. MICHAL BONCZA recommends a superb book dedicated to it
(L to R) Mikhail Dlugach, film poster for Yego Kariera/His Career, 1928; Anton Lavinsky, film poster for Miss Mend, 1927; Nikolai Prusakov, film poster for Pyat Minut/Five Minutes, 1929

Film posters of the Russian avant-garde
by Susan Pack
Taschen £34.15


FILM posters are among the most memorable graphic images generated during the first decade of the Soviet revolution.

Lenin, who believed “that of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema,” nationalised the film industry on August 27 1919 and in the same year the world’s first state-filmmaking school, the First State School of Cinematography, was established in Moscow.

The Soviet slogan “Art into life” encouraged artists to assume social responsibility in their work be it furniture design, fashion, architecture, photography, theatre stage design or the modernised film industry.

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