Polish posters really hit their stride during the age of Communism. From 1952 to 1989, the Soviet bloc controlled Poland, and posters were often the only spots of color along the gray, quiet streets in Polish cities. We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task." When paired with an educational system that would indoctrinate and form a “new-man” to embody the Soviet cause, it seemed that the Soviet propaganda machine--and by extension, the Soviets--was unstoppable. These images permeated all areas of everyday life and were reproduced on all manner of objects including matchboxes, which before had usually shown images from Chinese folklore. Poland has a long history with posters. Starting in the 1890s, artists would produce colorful posters to promote art exhibitions, theater performances, and ballets. They mixed popular styles like Japanism, Jugendstil, Secessionist, and Cubism with traditional symbolism and Polish folklore. This often led to thought-provoking and unique designs.

Communist Propaganda Posters Relive The Cold War With These 25 Communist Propaganda Posters

Wikimedia Commons Stanisław Wyspiański, depicted in this self portrait, was a Polish poster maker at the end of the 19th century. Relatively inexpensive, compared with Soviet-era paintings, for example, older examples from the 1920s and 1930s can be found in poster shops around the world. Take note: it is easy for both professional collectors and hobbyists to get burned.But private entities did their share in the comic book war against Communism as well. Witness a particularly wild example, Is This Tomorrow?, above. Published by the “Catechetical Guild Educational Society” in St. Paul, MN, this 1947 comic implicates government regulation of business, social welfare programs, anti-religious sentiment, and “people giving up their silly ideas about ‘sacredness’ of life” in a fiendishly orchestrated plot to take over America. Workers who embrace Communist doctrine are little more than dupes and pawns. You can read the whole feverish scenario here. Around this time, many artists sought to "outsmart censorship with subtle wit." Posters thus became the perfect way to accomplish this goal. The Russian Posters Collection is divided into three series spanning the years 1919 to 1989: 30 posters emphasizing the benefits of communism and the first "Five Year Plan" for workers, the achievements of the USSR under communism, religion as an enemy of the people, and the struggle against and decline of capitalism; 14 placards from the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR describing and depicting the strength of the country in industrial development, consumer goods, agricultural production, electrification, and the national welfare; and the collapse of the colonial system of imperialism and the problems facing capitalism; and last, ten posters from the "perestroika" period of the 1980s, most of which were exhibited in Moscow in 1988. In addition, the collection houses nine facsimiles of Russian posters from the 1920s-1930s. The posters have been digitized and are available online. We chatted to Harriet about just what's so special about their vintage Polish posters and how she and Sylwia began this unique project. What's so special about these vintage posters?

The Graphic Persuasiveness of 20th-Century Communist Posters

This blog is inspired by a recent donation of Russian Revolution posters by Bill Broadbent to St Edmund Hall. The artists' work was so admired that the city of Krakow announced the first "International Exposition of the Poster" in 1898. Its organizer, Jan Wdowiszewski, believed that posters should combine artistic and utilitarian value, present a critical view of reality, and fit in at both art galleries and alleyways. There's no question that many Polish posters fit that description. Original Soviet posters will include the print run, date and often the artist's name. Before they buy, collectors also should factor in gallery and auction house commissions and other costs. Lowry said cheaper posters can just be kept in a poster tube somewhere dry, but Grigorian insures his posters and stores them in a special art storage unit. From images of Vladimir Lenin promising “Land to the peasants!” to those of Mao Zedong declaring the Cultural Revolution, communist regimes have relied on powerful—and often beautifully wrought—artwork to ensure the successes of their revolutions. Because of their ease of distribution, posters in particular have figured as central vehicles of propaganda in nearly every communist nation. In this book, Mary Ginsberg offers the first truly global survey of the history and variety of communist poster art.A new travelling exhibition organised by The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford explores the art made during the tumultuous decade, and includes propaganda posters, revolutionary landscapes, papercuts and household objects. But even though it's dead, it's certainly not forgotten. The Poster Museum in Poland houses over 50,000 vintage posters that guests can still enjoy today. Visitors can take a colorful walk down memory lane and experience some of the wildest movie posters ever created in the country. Older posters can fetch much higher prices. Pre-Second World War Soviet posters, in particular, are in demand. Though most Soviet posters were produced in print runs of 30,000 to 60,000, they were meant to be posted on walls and then disposed of, so few older examples have survived.

Communist Posters by Mary Ginsberg | Goodreads

In the 50s and 60s, pop culture media like film and comic books lent themselves particularly well to anti-Communist propaganda, and they were exploited relentlessly by government agencies, production companies, and corporations. Films like I Married a Communist (below) and The Red Menace (top), both from 1949, offered sensationalized pulpy takes on the red scare. Beautifully arrayed, the posters in this collection offer a comprehensive look at the broad range of visual works that have both expressed and fueled one of the most powerful political ideas of the modern era. Calling themselves The Red Guards, radical students set out to destroy the "four olds": old ideas, customs, habits and culture. They spearheaded the interrogation, humiliation and beatings of teachers and intellectuals, and travelled the country destroying cultural heritage. As the perceived threat increased, so too did the scale of the monstrous caricatures. In the post-WWI era German and Norwegian posters above, Godzilla-sized Communists lay waste to entire cities. Below, in “Bolshevism Unmasked,” an example from the Second World War, the skeletal Communist destroyer straddles the entire globe. It didn’t stop at posters. All facets of media were used as political tools to install kitschy hope and pride into societal bloodstreams.

Wikimedia Commons During the Cold War, it was common to see Polish people waiting in long lines outside of state-run grocery stores. By its very nature, propaganda distorts the truth or tells outright lies. It targets our basest impulses—fear and anger, flight or fight. While works of pure propaganda may pretend to make logical arguments, they eliminate nuance and oversimplify complicated issues to the point of caricature. These general tendencies hold true in every case, but nowhere, perhaps, is this gross exaggeration and fear mongering more evident than in times of war. During the Cultural Revolution traditional artists were condemned as counter-revolutionaries and their work destroyed. A new style of art was required that supported the Maoist line and served the worker, peasant and soldier. Often, poster makers were hired in-house by theaters, operas, and museums. This resulted in many unique perspectives on popular films. More often than not, Polish artists avoided a "literal translation of the plot" and instead sought to express the overall mood of the movie. Lowry said it is impossible to tell whether Soviet poster prices will continue to rise, but history suggests the best and rarest works by important artists will. No particular genre is the most collectible, said specialists. Instead, the age of the poster and artist are integral to establishing value.

Propaganda Posters That Are Insidiously Well Made 21 Vile Nazi Propaganda Posters That Are Insidiously Well Made

This digital collection comprises selected materials from the following archival collection at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library: Russian Posters collection 1919-1989 and undated Between World War I and World War II, the purpose of posters changed slightly. Instead of promoting artistic events and performances, many posters were more geared toward advertising products. Other posters would promote Poland itself and encourage tourists to visit the country. Russian and international collectors are enthralled by the history, subject matter and extraordinary graphic imagery of posters produced from 1917 to 1991. Prices have increased considerably since the Soviet Union broke up. Chisholm Larsson's founder, Robert Chisholm, says that posters bought in 1991 are probably worth three-times the amount today. In some cases they could be worth much more. For those fascinated by Soviet graphic design and communist history, posters are an easy way to start a collection. Their topics touch on the environment, health, film and space exploration, as well as classic propaganda, depicting Lenin, Soviet workers and Stalin's five-year plans.

What's so special about these vintage posters?

An explosion of images accompanied the Russian Revolution. Posters were an important feature of the historical landscape: over 3,600 posters were designed and printed in millions of copies between 1918 and 1921, the period of Civil War when the Bolsheviks subdued counter-revolutionary insurgencies. During the Civil War, a period of economic devastation and destruction, somehow paper could be found for newspapers and for the lithographic production of posters. Artistic talent was mobilised from above to represent the Revolution unfolding in real time. Often highly stylized, posters were largely the work of trained poster artists and contain classics of early Soviet art. Boundaries between high art and mass-produced popular art, and art and propaganda, were fluid. The Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, an ardent supporter of the cause, oversaw teams of artists who created displays of posters in the shop windows of the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA). It has been argued that the political poster brought invention and imagination with the aim of appealing through the visual to the illiterate masses. Political posters had a pedagogic function in communicating a world view, sometimes with a practical purpose in mind. Poster artists strove to match images and social identities, as the historian Victoria Bonnell has shown in her book (Iconography of Power, 1997). They could also advertise recruitment to one side of the battle for or against the Bolshevik government. Unlike other collectibles like furniture, proper restoration can make sought-after posters gain value. “If you restore a poster — by having little flakes filled in, for example — the value can increase,” Lowry said. Some Soviet graphic artists are particularly prized, such as Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Gustav Klutsis, partly because their vibrant, avant-garde designs have greatly influenced today’s western artists. And while we’ve all seen our share of wartime propaganda, we may be less familiar with the decades-long propaganda war the U.S. and Western Europe waged against socialism and Communism, even decades before the Cold War era. It may surprise you to learn that this offensive began even before the start of World War One, as you can see above in a British Conservative Party poster from 1909.