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The man’s head and hand are the only obviously realistic elements in what otherwise could be a Malevich geometric abstraction. The representation of refracted light (which I assume is sunlight streaming into the dark bowels of the factory) and the reflection of light from window panes is exquisite. Vilner, 1928) is actually a film about the lives of workers in a cement factory. Though this looks as if it might be a poster for a noirish thriller about a man on the run, Cement (Vladimir B.
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The spiral staircase is reminiscent of the Stenbergs' own Constructivist sculptures, and also Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument for the Third International which is also on display at Shafrazi. Note the Stenbergs' signature bottom right, which reads 2 Stenberg 2.Ī 1927 poster for the German film High Society Wager or The Weather Station (Carl Froelich, 1923) about a social climbing couple who fall victim to gambling, beautifully symbolized by the staircase they are ascending and their emerging nemesis below. I’m also especially drawn to their deep black backgrounds.Īnother German film, Which of the Two or Manhunt (Nunzio Malasomma, 1926). With its concentric circles and dual figures, it nicely echoes the poster above, though to very different effect. The Stenbergs' use of concentric circles is one of my favorite elements in their work. This playful and energetic poster is for The Last Flight (Ivan Pravov, 1929), a film about a circus troupe marooned in southern Russia during the 1917 revolution. All of the Stenbergs’ posters are dynamic, but there is something especially thrilling and three dimensional about that blue gun-wielding sailor looming out of the top diagonal of the poster and the red revolutionaries pulling the cannon, straining towards the edges of the frame. This enormous poster (104" x 80", the size of 8 one-sheets) for the international export of Eisenstein's October (1927) was created in collaboration with Yakov Ruklevsky who is occasionally credited with the brothers. I love its combination of realism (two women’s faces and legs which are repeated three times) and abstraction (the grid of yellow, black and grey for their dresses) and the way the woman's arms spill into that grid. The poster above is for the German film Six Girls Seeking Shelter (Hans Behrendt, 1927). I didn’t repeat the two that I placed at the top of my recent Dziga-Vertov post, even though they are certainly two of my favorites. There are way too many great Stenberg posters to do justice to them in one post, so for now I thought I’d show ten of my all-time favorites. This gave their posters a consistency and quality that would have not been possible to achieve, due to the limitations of the printing processes available at the time, by cutting and pasting photographs onto paper. The ever-inventive Stenbergs had constructed a prototype overhead-projector which would allow them to project filmstrips onto their posters and to copy and embellish faces and bodies (as well as to distort them if necessary), hence their photorealist look. What is extraordinary about the Stenbergs' posters, beyond their amazingly expressive and dynamic use of color, composition and typography, which has rarely been equalled, is that, though they look like photomontage they are actually almost entirely illustration. (Vladimir continued to design film posters, though with less distinction, and was appointed Chief Designer for Moscow’s Red Square. From their first poster for The Eyes of Love in 1923 until Georgii’s untimely death ten years later in a motorcycle accident, they designed more than 300 posters.
MOVIE 300 POSTERS MOVIE
But it was as movie poster designers, in the glorious spring of Soviet Cinema, that they excelled. Pioneers of Constructivism, they worked as sculptors, architects and designers of everything from railway carriages to theater sets to women’s shoes, always working in collaboration with each other. The catalogue, a must-have for anyone interested in movie posters and graphic design, is out of print but used copies can still be found.īorn in 18 to a Swedish father and a Russian mother, the brothers initially studied engineering and fine arts. Of the 95 posters on display (many of which are the sole surviving examples and have never been publicly exhibited before) almost half are by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, my choices for the two greatest movie poster designers of all time.īack in 1997, MoMA mounted a retrospective of the Stenberg Brothers’ work which is what turned me on to them. There is a terrific exhibition of Soviet Revolutionary Movie Posters currently running, through next Friday, at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York.