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Agit-plakat (Agitational Poster), Moscow

Агит-плакат, Москва

Agit-plakat was an artistic organization formed in 1956 in Moscow by group of artists from the Artists Union of the USSR. Agit-plakat artists designed posters using a screen-printing process that generated artwork geared towards exhibitions opposed to the design of a poster for mass printing. Agit-plakat designs harkened back to the minimalistic styles employed by artists of the ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency) and TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) Windows Studio both prior to and during World War II. The Agit-plakat poster signified, "the decoupling of poster design from the influence of academic painting" that was prevalent in the Soviet Union as far back as the 1930s. The posters propagated mass education but also criticized backward production methods, alcoholism, and other social problems. The organization had its own studio and publishing division that disseminated about 200 posters each year. That number decreased to about 190 in the year 1990. The Soviet artist Konstantin Konstantinovich Ivanov was one of the co-founders of Agit-plakat.

Sources & Citations

Aulich, J., & Sylvestrová, M. (1999). Political posters in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945-1995: Signs of the times. Manchester: Manchester University Press. (pp. 83, 190)
Agitplakat: katalog. (1981). Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik. (comprehensive catalog of Agit-plakat output)
repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3565110/ (Agit-plakat: The destalinization of Soviet posters (1956–1966), Masha Kowell Ph.D.)
digitalsovietart.com (output of 200 posters per year, cited)