19

Designer Unknown

[Peasant, Don't Forget Your Brothers, The Prisoners of Capitalism]. 1927.

Condition B+ / B: replaced losses, repaired tears, creases and abrasions in margins and image and along vertical and horizontal folds.

Before the usage of photomontage as the primary medium for propaganda, Russian posters employed a split-image system, in which one side of the poster showed a dramatically different image than the other side. It was used again, here, in the 1930s to show the difference in life between the bucolic Soviet countryside and the "dangers" [to good Communist people] of the big cities. On the red side, peaceful peasants enjoy all of the benefits of the Socialist State, beautiful weather and healthy comradeship. On the black half, in the big city, beneath belching smokestacks, we see priests, soldiers and capitalists (including a character with a swastika on his hat) torturing and slaughtering people. Stylistically reminiscent of a woodblock print, the lithograph, while anonymous, is accomplished in an unexpected, Expressionist style.
28x38½ inches, 71x97¾ cm. Motser, Moscow.

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April 7, 2026 12:00 PM EDT
New York, NY, US

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