Vladimir and Georgi Stenberg, Three Million Process, 1926. The Collection of Alexander Dobrovinsky
Alexander Dobrovinsky is a famous lawyer, essay writer, art and relic collector. One of his most rare collections is fully dedicated to the Russian and Soviet posters of the first third of the 20th century. For the moment this collection of the valuable graphic art works counts more than five hundred unique posters among which there are classical advertising samples and first Soviet movie posters which served as a platform for radical art experiments. More than 200 posters created by 34 artists (V. Kandinsky, A. Rodchenko and V. Mayakovski, N. Gontcharova, A. Deineka and others) will be exhibited at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.
The changes of the state regime in the beginning of the last century introduced a new type of a commercial poster meant not only to illustrate an advertised product into the visual culture of the country. One had to «sell» preserves, movies, cigarettes and ideology as well to the population. Art bureaus which gave birth to the classical pieces of the Russian and world art were organized; they became the speaking trumpet of the new industry and consumer market. The works of the first copywriters of the Soviet art will be exhibited: the posters of A. Rodchenko and V. Mayakovski as well as the works of the artists who laid down the principles of the Soviet graphic art (I. Bograd, A. Zelensky, A. Pobedinsky, etc).
Cinema became one of the main ideological instruments of the Soviet government which aimed to bring up “a new human” free from the czarist regime left-overs and ready to share the values of the communist part. A new art style of a movie poster appeared as the Soviet film industry enjoyed its boom and the State supported “the most important arts” in the first third of the 20th century. Freedom of interpretation of a movie plot using a single graphic image, presentation of a new hero to the mass culture – a Soviet actor, collage principles and constructivism, creation of new catchy fonts – all that made a movie poster the platform for art experiments and brought the Avant-garde art to the streets of the Soviet cities. The items of the exhibition, many of which were created by the graduates of Higher Art and Technical Studios (Vladimir and George Stenberg, Mikhail Dlugatch, Nickolay Prusackov, George Borisov, Leonid Voronov, Iosif Gerasimovitch, etc.), are not only the evidence of the Russian culture of the interwar period but also precious artifacts of the Russian Avant-garde.