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$$PLAIN_TEXT_PREVIEW$$
The Great Utopia (Guggenheim, 1992)
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Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891–1956)
Otkryta podpiska na 1924 god na illustrirovannyi zhurnal Levogo Fronta Iskusstv (Lef), 2-i god izdaniia (Open subscription to Lef, the illustrated journal of the Left Front of the Arts for 1924, the second year of the publication), c. 1924
Lithograph, 26 7/8 x 20 7/8” (68.3 x 53 cm)
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Opening just a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, The Guggenheim Museum’s sprawling exhibition The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915–1932 (September 25–December 15, 1992) was recognized as, among other things, a remarkable feat of diplomacy by the Guggenheim’s then Director Thomas Krens. As part of our current effort to chronicle the Merrill C. Berman Collection and its impact over the past fifty years, we look back on this exhibition from a very different moment in American-Russian relations. Of the over 700 works on view in The Great Utopia, some fifty were loans from the Merrill C. Berman collection. Many of these had been previously exhibited at Art for the Masses: Russian Revolutionary Art from the Merrill C. Berman Collection (Williams College and Wesleyan University, 1985) and Art into Life: Russian Constructivism 1914–1932 (Henry Art Gallery and Walker Art Center, 1990–1991), but the Guggenheim exhibition reached the broadest audience. Many of the works loaned have since been acquired by MoMA. We highlight here a selection of posters exhibited at The Great Utopia that remain with us today.
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Nikolai Prusakov (1900–1952)
2–ia vystavka kinoplakata (Second Exhibition of Film Posters), Moscow State Chamber Theater (February 1–15, 1926), 1926
Lithograph, 42 5/8 x 28 3/16” (108.3 x 71.6 cm)
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Yuri Pimenov (1903–1977)
My stroim sotsialism (We Are Building Socialism), 1928
Lithograph, 28 1/2 x 21" (72.3 x 53.3 cm)
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Anatolii Belsky (1896–1971)
Trubka Kommunara. Po novelle I. Erenburga (The Communard's Pipe, [a film] based on Ilya Ehrenburg’s novel), 1929
Lithograph, 42 7/8 x 29 7/8” (108.9 x 75.9 cm)
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El Lissitzky (1890–1941)
USSR Russische Ausstellung (Russian exhibition), Kunstgewerbemuseum Zurich (March 24–April 28, 1929), 1929
Gravure, 49 3/4 x 35 5/8” (126.3 x 90.5 cm)
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Gustav Klutsis (1895–1938)
Bez tiazheloi promyshlennosti my ne mozhem postroit' nikakoi promyshlennosti (Without Heavy Industry We Cannot Build Any Industry), 1930
Lithograph, 41 1/8 x 29 1/8” (104.5 x 74 cm) Note: This line quotes Stalin's article "God velikogo pereloma: K XII godovshchine Oktiabria" (The Year of the Great Turning Point: On the Twelfth Anniversary of October Revolution), Pravda (November 7, 1929).
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Nikolai Dolgorukov (1902–1980)
Sozdadim moshchnuiu bazu industrializatsii na vostoke! (Let’s Create a Powerful Basis for Industrializing the Country’s Eastern Regions!), 1931
Lithograph, 41 3/8 x 29 3/16” (105.1 x 74.1 cm)
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Nikolai Dolgorukov (1902–1980)
Transportnik, vooruzhaias’ tekhnicheskimi znaniiami, boris’ za rekonstruktsiiu transporta (Transport Worker, Armed with Technical Skill, Strives to Reconstruct Transportation), 1931
Lithograph, 41 1/16 x 28 5/8” (104.3 x 72.7 cm)
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Elizaveta Ignatovich (1903–1983)
Bor’ba za politekhnicheskuiu shkolu est’ bor’ba za piatiletku, za kadry, za klassovoe kommunisticheskoe vospitanie (The Struggle for the Polytechnical School is the Struggle, for the Five-Year Plan, for the Communist Education about Class Consciousness), 1931
Lithograph, 20 1/4 x 28 3/8" (51.4 x 71.8 cm)
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Sergei Senkin (1894–1963)
Podkhvatim pochin udarnikov, dadim trekhnedel'nyi zarabotok na zaem vypuska 3-go reshaiushchego goda piatiletki (Let's Take Up the Initiative of the Shock Workers and Give a Three-Week Salary for the Third,
Decisive Year of the Five-Year Plan), 1931
Lithograph, 40 1/2 x 27 7/8" (102.8 x 70.8 cm)
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Konstantin Vialov (1900–1976)
Bol’shevistskimi tempami pustim v srok Kuznetskstroi
(Let’s Build Kuznetsktstroi with Bolshevik Speed), 1931
Lithograph, 42 3/4 x 29 3/4” (108.6 x 75.6 cm)
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Vasilii Elkin (1897–1991)
Kazhdyi kolkhoznik, kazhdaia brigada, kazhdaia MTS dolzhny znat’ plan bol’shevistskogo seva (Each Peasant, Each Brigade, Each MTS Should Know the Plan of Bolshevik Sowing), c. 1931
Lithograph, 39 1/2 x 27 7/8” (100 x 70.8 cm)
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Installation view of The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde 1915–1932, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
(September 25–December 15, 1992). The SmolROSTA poster, Organizatsiia proizvodstva pobeda nad kapitalisticheskim stroem (Organization of Production is Victory over the Capitalist Order), attributed to Wladyslaw Strzemiński is among Berman’s posters visible on the red walls (now MoMA 697.2018).
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