Posters of the Revolutionary Era

This Russian Museum exhibition catalogue publishes much more than the anthologized propaganda posters of other survey books. The curators and authors have selected works that show how the propaganda poster evolved as an independent genre both in subject and style. The earliest examples follow the conventions of popular prints (lubki) and folk tale imagery of the tsarist period - images often tell a story with satirical and grotesque depictions of enemies. Prevalent in the early examples is a realism akin to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art. In the early 1920s a more modern and spare form of poster art drew on experiments of the avant-garde to create new styles.