Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Give Millions of Skilled Workers for the New Factories and Institutes

Preview image of work. lithograph on paper, Give Millions of Skilled Workers for the New Factories and Institutes 33060

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Give Millions of Skilled Workers for the New Factories and Institutes

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Artist

Gustav Gustavovich Klutsis (1895 - 1938)

Title

Give Millions of Skilled Workers for the New Factories and Institutes

Creation Date

1931

Century

mid-20th century

Dimensions

49 x 42 in. (124.46 x 106.68 cm)

Object Type

Creation Place

Asia, Russia

Medium and Support

lithograph on paper

Credit Line

Generously lent by Svetlana and Eric Silverman ’85, P’19

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

As exemplified by this work, the posters of Gustav Klutsis feature a distinctive propaganda style. An enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution, he heralded photomontage as the medium best representative of the art of socialist construction, both for its documentary “truth” and for its relation to science and industry—spheres vital to building the Soviet state. He often staged his photographs, creating “revolutionary” mise-en-scènes. He then disassembled the images, reorganized, and pasted them on bold chromatic planes to create commanding visual tableaus. These tightly edited montages of decontextualized fragments of Soviet life were as far removed from factual reality as any Soviet propaganda.