Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Lenin forever!

Lenin
V. Briskin, 1970

The author of this poster is Veneamin Briskin - a brilliant illustrator and a graphic artist, whose best works included Maxim Gorky and Mark Twain books. He created a series of posters called “Europe after the War” and illustrations to “Vasili Tyorkin” – poem about a soviet soldier by famous poet Aleksandr Tvardovsky.

This poster was created for international exhibition “Satire Fighting for Peace”, held in 1971 in Moscow. In the early seventies War in Vietnam was raging and the relations between USSR and USA was tense, so Soviet Union kept propagating positive image of the Soviet Union. One of the means was taking part and organizing of various events, which despite being politically biased, did exhibit many modern works of art.

The poster’s style is laconic. It was designed for European audience, bearing no slogans or sayings by soviet leaders. The red word «Lenin» refers to the first leader of Soviet Socialist RepublicVladimir Lenin, whose ideas and works formed the basis for communist ideology in Russia.