Iraklii Moiseevich Toidze was a Soviet graphic artist and painter. He began his artistic studies at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts where he graduated in 1930. His earliest works, like the 1927 “Ilyich's Light Bulb” (held in the Museum of Art of Oriental Peoples, Moscow), helped underscore the role of Soviet themes within the field of Georgian art. Furthermore, Toidze executed the noted Georgian-themed painting, “Young Dzhugashvili [Stalin] reads Rustaveli's 'The Knight in the Panther's skin’”...

Iskusstvo was the Art Publishing House (A.K.A. Visual Arts Publishing) that was created in 1936 from Ogiz-Izogiz (State Art and Literature Publishing House). It disseminated books and journals dealing with graphic design and the fine arts, and it issued numerous posters. Since the Iskusstvo banner was part of the State Printing Works in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and Moscow, its two main offices were located in those two cities.