Gustav Klucis

Gustav Klucis (K Special). Clip from a program about the Russian avantgarde artist and constructivist Gustav Klucis.

"Klucis worked in a variety of experimental media.

He liked to use propaganda as a sign or revolutionary background image. His first project of note, in 1922, was a series of semi-portable multimedia agitprop kiosks to be installed on the streets of Moscow, integrating 'radio-orators', film screens, and newsprint displays, all to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Revolution.

Like other Constructivists he worked in sculpture, produced exhibition installations, illustrations and ephemera.

[...]

[His poster's] dynamic compositions, distortions of scale and space, angled viewpoints and colliding perspectives make them perpetually modern.

In the later work the presence of Stalin, accepting the applause of a cut-and-paste cross-section of Soviet society, resonates with the falsity of Stalin's myth.

Klucis is one of four artists with a claim to having invented the sub-genre of political photo montage in 1918 (along with the German Dadaists Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann, and the Russian El Lissitzky)."

-- read further here.

I'm a huge fan of the European avantgarde art movements between the two world wars, such as dadaism, bauhaus and constructivism.

This clip from a documentary of Gustav Klucis gives you a snapshot of some of the wonderful poster art he made.