Gustav Klutsis

 

"In 1919, Gustav Klutsis (1895-1938) joined both the Communist party and UNOVIS (Affirmers of the New Art), a collective of artists who sought to use abstraction for agitational purposes.  Klutsis's photomontage embodies these dual commitments.  While some of the photographic elements have deteriorated or been lost, the combination of approaches - simplified geometries exemplified by the red square and cut and pasted photographs calling out the ambitions of the new Soviet order - suggests the work may have been created in two stages:  begun in the spirit of UNOVIS and reworked after Vladimir Lenin's death in January 1924.  The printed text refers to Lenin's famous slogan of 1920, 'Communism = Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.'"

Gustave Klutsis, Latvian, "Electrification of the Entire Country", c. 1920.

Gustav Klutsis, Maquette for 'Plan for Socialist Offensive' magazine spread, for 30 Days.  1929.

Gustav Klutsis, Latvian.  'Let's Fulfill the Plan of Great Works'.  1930.

Gustav Klutsis, Latvian.  'Maquette for the poster 'The Reality of Our Program is Real People - That is You and Me'.  1931.  'Photomontage is an agitation-propaganda form of art,' Gustav Klutsis declared.  This poster depicts Joseph Stalin as a man of the people, striding alongside workers representing a variety of occupations.  The title is from a 1931 speech in which he promoted higher wages for technical specialists as a way to improve industrial productivity; the imagery reiterates the slogan's anti-elitism.  Preparatory designs reveal how Klutsis experimented to create a poster with maximum visual power, cutting and rephotographing his source material and pasting elements in different configurations to determine his finished composition.  In 1931, the year this work was published, Stalin's regime centralized power production, which enabled the state to censor artists and control their output, including dictating that the leader personify socialism.  Artists once drawn to the utopianism of the revolution found themselves enlisted to mobilize the masses in support of a dictatorship.  Despite his years of service, Klutsis was executed in 1938 for being 'an enemy of the state.'"