Mount Christopher. Stenberg Brothers: constructing a revolution in Soviet design

Essay by Peter Kenez. — New York : The Museum of Modern Art, 1997. — 96 p., ill. — ISBN: 0-87070-051-0, 0-8109-6173-3Suffering a fate common to many of the artists and designers working in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg are little known today. Like that of many members of the postrevolutionaiy avant-garde, their work fell into disfavor in the 1930s, when Josef Stalin decreed socialist realism to be the official mode of artistic representation. Further contributing to the Stenbergs’ eclipse was the nature of their work. Their greatest achievements were not in the fine arts but in the field of graphic design, specifically, their designs for mass-produced posters used to advertise films. For good reason, such works generally are catalogued as ephemera; cheaply printed on poor-quality paper, the posters had a singular and timely purpose. That so many examples of the Stenbergs' work survive is in itself astonishing. The exhibition Stenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design, organized by Christopher Mount, Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design, is the first critical survey of the work of these two seminal figures in the history of twentieth-century graphic design. While the Stenbergs’ achievements include designs for theatrical sets and costumes, books, interiors, and buildings, it is their film posters that comprise their greatest contribution to the arts of this century. The film posters most directly addressed the possibility of cultural expression in an age of mass production, melding the ethos of the machine, in their means of production, and the film, in their visual language. Transcending both functional and political boundaries, the work of the Stenberg brothers represents the best of the spirit of invention that has characterized the twentieth century.Foreword. Terence RileyStenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design. Christopher Mount
Early Soviet Cinema Culture. Peter Kenez
PlatesChronology. Compiled by Natasha Kurchanova