Windows on the War. Soviet Posters at Home and Abroad

The Art Institute of Chicago - July 31st 2011 - October 23rd 2011

In 1997, 26 tightly wrapped brown paper parcels were discovered deep in a storage area for the Department of Prints and Drawings. Their presence was a mystery, their contents a puzzle. As conservators and curators carefully worked to open the envelopes, they were surprised and intrigued to find that they contained 50-year-old monumental posters created by TASS, the Soviet Union’s news agency. The idea for a major exhibition began to take shape.

Impressively large—between five and ten feet tall—and striking in the vibrancy and texture of the stencil medium—some demanded 60 to 70 different stencils and color divisions—these posters were originally sent abroad, including to the Art Institute, to serve as international cultural “ambassadors” and to rally allied and neutral nations to the endeavors of the Soviet Union, a partner of the United States and Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany. In Windows on the War, the posters will be presented both as unique historical objects and as works of art that demonstrate how the preeminent artists of the day used unconventional technical and aesthetic means to contribute to the fight against the Nazis, marking a major chapter in the history of design and propaganda.

Windows on the War exhibition features 250 posters from the war and pre-war period, 155 of which are the large-scale stenciled posters produced at the TASS studio. Viewers will also find their rich historical and cultural context revealed through photographs and documentary material illuminating the visual culture of US–USSR relations before and during the war.

Windows on the War is accompanied by a 380-page catalogue, distributed by Yale University Press, which will be the first major scholarly English-language text on the posters’ production.

The information on this page is taken from the Art Institute of Chicago announcement webpage.

Click here to watch an video overview of Windows on the War —Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941-1945 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago website.

Location and Contact Information:

The Art Institute of Chicago

111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois

Tel: +1 (312) 443-3600

http://www.artic.edu/aic/