ROSTA / GPP : Pictorial Newsposter-Series of the Russian Avantgarde I , Moscow, 1920 / 1921
In February 1919, caricaturist Mikhail Cheremnykh started an artistic campaign in an empty shop window with a visually designed report of the Bolshevist news agency ROSTA. Shortely thereafter the initiative was taken up by the popular poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. He selected most of the news items and prepared them for pictorial realisation. “The field of activity was huge: advertising work for the Comintern and for collecting mushrooms in the interest of those suffering from hunger, the battle against Wrangel and the typhus lice, posters requesting to keep old newspapers and posters advocating electrification.”(Mayakovsky) The Posters (each ca. 41 x 51 cm) were handmade with stencils. (Courtesy Gallery Thomas Flor, Berlin)
ROSTA 753 – 1, December 1920 : The whites had a lot of guns
ROSTA 753 – 2, The whites had a big army
ROSTA 753 – 3, But the whites were´nt able to break through the front of the Red Army soldiers.
ROSTA 753 -4, And why ?
ROSTA 753 -5, Because we were fighting for the liberation of the proletariat
ROSTA 753 – 7, Also the new eagle
ROSTA 753 -8, Will be destroyed by your attack. -.
ROSTA 753 – 9, If we submit to the work discipline now.
GPP 47 – 1, Jan. / Feb. 1921. There are no nails nor scythes-
GPP 47 -2, I run barefoot and unclothed
GPP 47 -3, Our factories can do little – the war has destroyed everything
GPP 47 – 4, But when we have finished the war,
GPP 47 – 5, We will rebuilt the factories.
GPP 47 – 6, In a month, a year there will be cotton again, nails and cattle.
GPP 47 – 7, To expect this, you gotta give bread to the workers.
GPP 47 – 8, To nuture everything, I sow out and plant my whole country.
GPP 74 – 1, … Here in Moscow they keep on whispering: Stop your senseless civil war ..
GPP 74 – 2, The Constituent Assembly- in that lies salvation, and not in military confrontation.
GPP 74 – 3, But look at Kronstadt, at Siberia -different plights. They say Russia will survive only if it fights
GPP 74 – 4, They say that instead of putting aside our arms and using our hands to work factories and farms
GPP 74 – 5, We have to fight for our lives to the end
GPP 74 – 6, And still tons of Siberian bread go straight to the Kulak gangs instead
GPP 74 – 7, While you, the ordinary peasant,
GPP 74 – 8, and you, the worker, you are starving.
GPP 74 – 9, What does this mean ?
GPP 74 – 10, It means that also the SRs would fight-but onboth sides, as long as one is right. Our war is for the good of the workers
GPP 74 – 11, and against the capitalists´and the landlords´yoke
GPP 74 – 12, The conclusion is clear: Don´t listen to these sneaks…
GPP 81 – 1, March 1921. Previously, our factories produced these weapons.
GPP 81 – 2, Now we have a new weapon.
GPP 81 – 3, So that we are ready for the spring
GPP 81 – 4, Harrow and plough have to be repaired:
GPP 81 – 5, Workers! A new front opens up:
GPP 81 – 6, Faster, go ahead with the agricultural reconstuction !
