Gombarg-Idarskii, Iulii Iakovlevich

Iulii Iakovlevich Gombarg was a Russian and Soviet graphic artist and cartoonist. During the 1890s, Gombarg studied at the School of Arts in Odessa where he worked on portraits and landscapes. From 1906 to 1917, the artist created political caricatures collaborating with journal publications such as Koliuchka (Thorn); Shirm (Screen); Rannee Utro (Early Morning); Solntse Rossii (Sun of Russia) and Teatr i Zhizn (Theater and Life). As a cartoonist, he collaborated with the magazines Krokodil (Crocodile); Zhurnalist (Journalist); Chitatel i Pisatel (Reader and Writer), and the newspapers “Vechernyaya Moskva” (Evening Moscow) “Komsomolskaia Pravda” (Komsomol Truth) and “Izvestia” (News). In 1917, Gombarg designed a postcard series titled “Album of Caricatures and Grimaces of the Revolution" that satirized leading officials of the Tsarist administration. In addition, the artist illustrated literature publications by Maxim Gorkii and Vladimir Maiakovskii.

From 1919 to 1925, Gombarg resided in Poland and also in the United States. During this period, he was illustrating communist-oriented publications. By the mid-1920s, the artist returned to the Soviet Union and was living in Moscow. Of the many posters Gombarg designed, a few noted titles are, “Did you subscribe to ‘Red Woodworker’? (c. 1924); “TPG: Trade and Industrial Gazette” (1929); "Fascism is Unrestrained Chauvinism and a War of Conquest. -G. Dimitrov" (1935). Gombarg signed his works using at least two pseudonyms, Giui Rembo (a.k.a. Guy Rimbaud) and Iu. Idarskii.