Koretsky Viktor Borisovitch (1 results)

First Edition. Ten posters. Offset lithography on medium-weight stock; each approximately 65cm x 43cm (ca. 26" x 17"). Professionally cleaned and archivally mounted on linen; Fine (A+/A). Caption titles include: 1. "Angola: Racism in Action" 2. "The Apotheosis of the Dictator" [Augusto Pinochet] 3. "Lebanon: Love to the Middle East" 4. "Mr. Bullet" 5. "Nicaragua: the First Marks" 6. "South Africa: the World's Gendarme" 7. "Soweto: Power and Right" 8. "U.S.A.: Free at Last!" 9. "U.S.A.: The True Bill of Rights" 10. "Vietnam: the Yankees Were Here" An uncommon (but documented) series of posters issued in the waning days of the Soviet era by Viktor Koretsky (1909-1998) in collaboration with Viktor Sokolov (b.1940). Koretsky, who came of age in the heady days of the pre-WW2 avant-garde, was the designer of dozens of important graphic works during the period of the Second Five Year Plan, many utilizing the dominant photomontage techniques of that period. He continued working through WW2 and the Cold War, his style constantly shifting to accommodate the state-sanctioned aesthetics of each period. This series, produced in the early 1980s, represents a rather unusual return to pre-War techniques, a throwback to Koretsky's earliest photomontage compositions, modulated through the lens of late-stage Soviet communism. Viktor Sokolov (b.1940), Koretsky's collaborator on the series, is an architect and interior designer known especially for his designs for Soviet pavilions at numerous international expositions in the 70s and 80s. The theme for all the posters in the series is one of strident anti-Americanism, with each composition pointing out the depredations and internal contradictions of U.S. "pro-Democracy" interventions around the globe - from Chile, where a bloated, self-satisfied Pinochet sits with his boots on a pile of corpses; to Soweto, where the systemic oppression of people of color is supported by American investments; to the streets of the U.S.A. itself, where promise of democracy clearly does not extend to African-American communities. Superimposed on each scene is a .45 caliber bullet bearing the initials "USA." Together, these posters offer an impressive glimpse at a period of Soviet aesthetics where state control was clearly beginning to flag, leaving room for new techniques or, as here, a return to very old ones. We have found no reliable source for how many individual works were ultimately produced for the "Bloody Deeds of Imperialism" series, but we believe these ten images represent most if not all of them. Individually or together, the posters are not commonly seen in the U.S.; each was printed in an edition of 30,000 - a seemingly large number, but quite small by the standards of Soviet propaganda campaigns. Most would have been distributed within the USSR and in countries in the Soviet orbit. None are separately catalogued in OCLC, and individual examples appear only sporadically in the American marketplace. REF: Biographical article on Sokolov on the website of the Russian Academy of Arts (www.rah.ru). The series is discussed (but not pictured) in Wolf, Koretsky: The Soviet Photo Poster (2012), p.424. …