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Past exhibitions

Mother Tongue 09 March — 11 May 2019

Apparition of the Last Soviet Artist in London 16 October — 17 October 2018

ShadowMemory x Art Night Open 07 July — 08 July 2018

ShadowMemory х Ural Biennial 14 September — 12 November 2017

Postponed Futures 26 April — 24 June 2017

Destined To Be Happy 02 December 2016 — 28 February 2017

Superwoman: ‘Work, Build and Don’t Whine' 18 June — 15 October 2016

Unexpected Eisenstein 17 February — 30 April 2016

Between The Lines 26 January — 08 February 2016

Peripheral Visions 02 October — 30 November 2015

Bonobo 17 July — 30 August 2015

DNA Swap 05 June — 11 June 2015

Documenting Ukraine 14 May — 17 May 2015

Borderlands 20 March — 16 May 2015

Bolt 06 December 2014 — 28 February 2015

A Game in Hell. The Great War in Russia 27 September — 26 November 2014

Work and Play Behind the Iron Curtain 20 June — 31 August 2014

The Shabolovka Tower Model 31 May — 12 June 2014

Taint 08 April — 03 May 2014

Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen 17 January — 29 March 2014

Utopia LTD 21 September — 20 December 2013

See USSR 07 June — 31 August 2013

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Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen

Kino/Film:
Soviet Posters
of the Silent Screen

17 January — 29 March 2014      FREE ENTRY

GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design in collaboration with Antikbar is pleased to present ‘Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen’. As the UK/Russia year of culture begins, this exciting exhibition examines the golden age of Soviet film posters and is co-curated by Elena Sudakova, director of GRAD, and film critic and art historian Lutz Becker.

Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen

17 January — 29 March 2014

FREE ENTRY


Curated by Elena Sudakova and Lutz Becker

Exhibition design by Calum Storrie and Katya Sivers


Photographs by Henry Milner

Video by Louie Oestreicher


The 1920s saw the advent of new and radical graphic design created to advertise silent films across the Soviet Union. Film posters of this era have become masterpieces in their own right, produced at a time when innovative on-screen techniques were being incorporated into the design of advertisements. Some 25 works by the brothers Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Iakov Ruklevskii, Aleksandr Naumov, Mikhail Dlugach and Nikolai Prusakov, are on display.


During the mid- to late-1920s cinema flourished in the Soviet Union. A relatively new art form, film matched the revolutionary ethos of an emerging generation of artists for whom fine art was deemed bourgeois. The advantages of using film as a propaganda tool for the largely illiterate masses were not lost on the government, who supported the burgeoning film industry. A state-controlled organisation, Sovkino, managed the distribution of foreign films, including those from the US which were very popular; profits were used to subsidise domestic film production. These Soviet films soon gained an international reputation through feature-length masterworks such as Battleship Potemkin.


Under the umbrella of Sovkino, Reklam Film was the department that controlled the production of film posters across the USSR and at its helm was designer Iakov Ruklevskii, who engaged a number of talented young artists. They created a whole new visual vocabulary for film posters, both foreign and domestic, incorporating the practices they saw on-screen. As the films were black and white, the designers employed their artistic licence to great effect, using vivid colour blocking and dynamic typographical experiments to capture the essence of each production, sometimes without having even seen it. The result is a body of work which is both powerful and enduring.

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Projected alongside the posters are excerpts of seminal films, including October, The End of St Petersburg and Storm Over Asia, showcasing the innovative techniques employed by the poster artists and film-makers of this era, and highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the pioneering vision of directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin and the output of the poster artists engaged to promote them. Techniques such as cinematic montage, repetition, asymmetric viewpoints and dramatic foreshortenings were used in the creation of both the films and the posters, leading to the appearance of a distinctive and highly influential body of design. Mass produced during the 1920s, the posters were made for one use only and few originals survive. The exhibition at GRAD is a rare opportunity to see these seminal works, many of which have not been exhibited in the UK before.

The Personal Archive of Dziga Vertov (1896–1954)

The Personal Archive of Dziga Vertov (1896–1954)

‘Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen'
‘Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen‘
Edited by Elena Sudakova and Alexandra Chiriac

Published to accompany the exhibition ‘Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen’ (17 January — 29 March 2014)
95 pages, fully illustrated


This publication brings together the distinctive graphics of 1920s Soviet film posters, informative essays and detailed artist biographies. Richly illustrated, it features works by the brothers Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Iakov Ruklevskii, Aleksandr Naumov, Mikhail Dlugach, Nikolai Prusakov and others.

Book Contents:
‘Kino: Revolution, Film and Design’ by Lutz Becker
‘Soviet Cinema and the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ by Alexandra Chiriac
Biographies of Film Directors
Biographies of Film Poster Designers

If you would like to purchase this publication please contact GRAD
Blippar
GRAD is delighted to collaborate with Blippar, the augmented reality app, to make Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen an enriching interactive experience. Just download the app onto your smart-phone and point it at selected posters to transform it into an audio guide, read additional information or to buy a reproduction of the poster.
Posters
Nikolai Prusakov
The Second
Exhibition of Film
Posters

108.5 × 71.5
1926
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Artist unknown
Marriage on a Bet
108 × 60
1928

Original title Liebeskarneval
Germany, 1928
Director Augusto Genina
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Artist unknown
Dare We Stay Quiet
108 × 72.5
1926 

Original title Durfen wir schweigen?
Germany, 1926
Director Richard Oswald
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Turksib
109 × 71.5
1926

USSR, 1926
Director Viktor Turin
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Nikolai Prusakov
A Dancer’s Career
104.5 × 72
1924

Original title Lille Lise Let-Paa Taa
Denmark, 1924
Director Lau Lauritzen
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £25, A1 £60
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Sport Fever
109 × 74
c. 1928

USSR, 1928
Directors Alfred Dobbelt
and Boris Nikiforov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Knight’s Move
101.5 × 72
1927

Original title Le Miracle des Loups
France, 1927
Director Raymond Bernard
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Aleksandr Naumov
Oil
101 × 70.5
1927

USSR, 1927
Directors Nikolai Lebedev and Aleksandr Litvinov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Mikhail Dlugach
Cement
106.5 × 71
1928

USSR, 1928
Director Vladimir Vilner
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
The Screw from Another Machine
109 × 73.5
c. 1928

USSR, c. 1928
Director Aleksandr Talanov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Death Loop
94 × 62
1929

Original title Die Todesschleife
Germany, 1928
Director Arthur Robison
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Engineer Strong’s Project
95 × 63
1929

Original title Not for Publication
USA, 1927
Director Ralph Ince
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £25, A1 £60
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
The Three Million Case
101 × 72
1926

Original title Not for Publication
USSR, 1926
Director Aleksandr Talanov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Artist unknown
A Life for a Life
108 × 71
c. 1926

Original title Dagfin
Germany, 1926
Director Joe May
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
October
107 × 71
(one of eight parts)
1927

USSR, 1926
Directors Grigorii Aleksandrov,
Sergei Eisenstein
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Man and Livery
139 × 102
1927

Original title Der letzte Mann
Germany, 1924
Director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Semën Semënov-Menes
Storm over Asia
93.5 × 72.5
c. 1927

Original title The Heir of Genghis Khan
USSR, 1928
Director Vsevolod Pudovkin
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Artist Unknown
Heroes of the Blast Furnace
108.5 × 72.5
1928

USSR, 1928
Director Evgenii Ivanov-Barkov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
The Decembrists
109 × 72.5
1926

USSR, 1926
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Viktor Klimashin
The Uprising    
91 × 66.5
1935


USSR, 1935
Director Semën Timoshenko
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Viktor Klimashin
Death of Sensation
91 × 66.5
1935

Original title Durfen wir schweigen?
USSR, 1935
Director Aleksandr Andrievskii
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Mikhail Dlugach
Azerbaijan
53 × 23
1925

Original title Durfen wir schweigen?
USSR (Georgia), c. 1923
Director Ivan Perestiani
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Izrail Bograd
The End of Saint Petersburg
125.5 × 95
1927

USSR, 1927
Director Vsevolod Pudovkin
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Semën Semënov-Menes
The End of Saint Petersburg
126.4 × 95.5
c. 1927

USSR, 1927
Director Vsevolod Pudovkin
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Nikolai Prusakov and Grigorii Borisov
A Woman from the Fair
136 × 107
1928

USSR (Georgia), 1928
Director Georgii Makarov
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
A Real Gentleman
143 × 108
1928

USA, 1928
Director Clyde Bruckman
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Iakov Ruklevskii
October
205 × 100.5
1927

USSR, 1927
Directors Grigorii Aleksandrov,
Sergei Eisenstein
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75
Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg
Battleship Potemkin
67 × 90
1925

USSR, 1925
Director Sergei Eisenstein
Reproductions of all posters are available for purchase in our new online shop, coming soon. If you would like to place an order now, please call us on +44 (0)20 7637 7274 or place an order when you visit the gallery.
A3 £30, A1 £75

KINO/FILM EVENTS

Accompanying the exhibition was a programme of events that brought the Soviet silent screen to life. Highlights included film screenings, expert talks and a special display of Dziga Vertov’s personal possessions.

AN EVENING CELEBRATING DZIGA VERTOV

12 March 2014

A unique evening celebrating the life of ground-breaking Soviet director Dziga Vertov. A screening of a newly discovered short film by Vertov and presentation of his personal effects was complimented by talks from collector Martijn Le Coultre and academic Eva Bezverkhny.

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‘BED AND SOFA’ (dir: Abram Room, 1927, 75’)

26 February 2014

‘BED AND SOFA’ (dir: Abram Room, 1927, 75’)

A special collaborative event with Obskura saw GRAD present this landmark Soviet production, so controversial that it was banned on two continents. A discussion with Professor Julian Graffy (SSEES, UCL), artist Maria Kapajeva and Dr Margherita Sprio (University of Westminster) accompanied the screening.

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CURATOR TOURS

, 22 February 2014; 07 March 2014

Assistant curator Alexandra Chiriac led visitors on a tour of the exhibition, examining the connection between film and design in 1920s Russia.
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PANEL DISCUSSION

22 January 2014

Kino/Film exhibition co-curators Elena Sudakova and Lutz Becker were joined by Dr. Paul Rennie (Central St Martins), Isabel Stevens (BFI), Dr Philip Cavendish (UCL) and Prof Christina Lodder (University of Kent). The panel discussed the climate of creative effervescence in the early days of the Soviet Union, which led to important innovations in both film-making and poster design and produced a whole new visual vocabulary still in use today.

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OPENING NIGHT

16 January 2014

GRAD opened its doors to press, guests and exhibiting artists to celebrate Kino/Film: Soviet Posters of the Silent Screen.

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Stone Lithography Demonstration at London Print Studio

29 March 2014

Following the invention of lithography in the late eighteenth century, printmaking and the graphic arts were transformed. Based on the incompatibility of water and oil, and utilizing a polished limestone block as a substrate on which to draw, lithography was the first printing process to truly capture and reproduce the expressive qualities of hand drawn images. Teaching of the technique has dwindled and few open access studios offer access to this exciting medium, so this was a rare opportunity to see stone lithography in action thanks to London Print Studio.

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