03/01/2021 Gustav Klutsis, revolutionary propagandist (1895-1938) | The Charnel-House

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Gustav Klutsis, revolutionary propagandist (1895- 12

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Gustavs Klucis — also known as Gustav Klutsis, the Russian spelling of his
name — was one of the pioneers of Soviet agitprop graphic design,
particularly prominent for his revolutionary use of the medium
of photomontage to create political posters, book designs, newspaper and
magazine illustrations. He was born in the small village of Ruen in Latvia.
He studied art in Riga from 1913 to 1915, and later in Petrograd from 1915
to 1917. He then continued his education at SVOMAS-VKhUTEMAS in Moscow.
It was there that he met Valentina Kulagina, his future wife and a prominent
poster/book designer herself.

As a student, Klucis worked with Tatlin, Malevich, Lissitzky, and other

representatives of the new artistic order in the new state. In his early works
he was particularly preoccupied with the problems of representation of three-
dimensional space and spatial construction. In 1919 he created his first
photocollage Dynamic City, where photography was used as an element
of construction and illustration. In 1920 Klucis joined the Communist party;
his works around this time sought to transform the logic of political thought
and propaganda into Suprematist form, often using documentary images
of Lenin, Trotsky, and eventually Stalin in his radical poster designs.

After graduating from VKhUTEMAS, Klucis started teaching and working

in a variety of experimental media. He became an active member of INKhUK
and a militant champion of Constructivism. Klucis advocated the rejection
of painting and was actively involved in making production art
[proizvodstvennoe iskusstvo], such as multimedia agitprop kiosks
to be installed on the streets of Moscow, integrating radio-orators, film
screens, and newsprint displays. Two such structures were constructed for the
Fourth Congress of the Comintern in November 1922 and subsequently
enjoyed great popularity as their plans were published and models exhibited.
Through these constructions Klucis developed his own individual method
of combining slogans and functional structures built around simple
geometrical figures — this method would later lie at the core of his works
on paper as well.

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Klucis’ first photomontage designs for books and magazine covers were
published in 1923, around the same time that Rodchenko was experimenting
with the medium in the magazine LEF and the publication of Mayakovsky’s
poem Pro Eto. Klucis recognized that the “fixed reality” of photography offered
endless possibilities for a new form of propaganda art that was accessible and
effective. He acquired his own camera in 1924 which enabled him
to incorporate his own photographs in the collages. Thanks to Klucis,
Rodchenko and Sergei Senkin, by late 1924, the use of photomontage
in publication of books and illustrations had been consolidated.

After Lenin’s death in 1924 his image dominated Klucis’s propaganda designs,
up until 1931 when it was replaced by the image of Stalin. Klucis’ photo-
slogan works comprising the image of Lenin published in the magazines
Molodaia Gvardiia and Smena in 1925 confirmed his reputation as a leading
exponent of political photomontage. It was in 1926 that Klucis started to work
specifically on political posters promoting socialist reconstruction,
in accordance with the ideological discourse of the Party at that time. In 1927
the All-Union Printing Exhibition initiated by El Lissitzky took place, which
represented Soviet poster art in all its manifestations. Klucis not only
exhibited a large number of works, but also played an active role in organizing
the exhibition. Klucis’ work was also included in the 1928 International Press
Exhibition in Cologne, where the main exhibit was El Lissitzky’s
photomontage.

In 1928 Klucis joined Oktiabr — an association that united leftist artists,

whose aim was “to promote the class-proletarian tendencies in the sphere
of three-dimensional art.” The shared conceptual approach and variety
of creative interests of Oktiabr members was an important factor in Klucis’
artistic development. Starting from 1929 Klucis worked on the Struggle for
a Five-Year Plan series of photomontages and posters that would become
classics of Soviet design just like his earlier Lenin series. His works of this
period often combine methods of posed photography, reportage and double-
exposure images.

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Starting from 1930 Klucis lectured at the Moscow Printing Institute, and
became a vice-chairman of ORRP, a group that united poster artists.
By 1931 he was concentrating almost entirely on poster design, however the
political climate was gradually changing and soon all posters were subject
to Party censorship. Portraits of Stalin began to dominate the propaganda
imagery. Klucis’s new posters began including huge portraits in the
photomontages: photographs of marchers, shock workers, and, most
commonly, Stalin. Klucis also worked on photomontages for front pages
of Pravda newspaper and photo-panels for celebrations. Stylistically these
works signaled a move away from Constructivism towards a monumental
propaganda approach in glorification of Stalin. The spread of the Stakhanovite
movement (dedicated to increasing labor productivity) from 1935 provided
Klucis with yet another subject for his work. Around 1936 Klucis realized the
limited decorative potential of photomontage compared to the new Soviet
monumental art, and started to work in paint.

In 1933 Klucis exhibited twice at the State Tretyakov Gallery: in a major

visual arts exhibition entitled Fifteen Years of Artists of RSFSR, which he also
helped to organize, and the poster exhibition Against the Imperialist War.
By the mid 1930s Klucis was one of the leading exponents of propaganda art,
however his relationship with the authorities was gradually deteriorating,
particularly with IZOGIZ, the Soviet publisher of mass propaganda. The last
major exhibition he participated in and helped to organize was the Soviet
Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition.

On 17 January 1938, Klucis was secretly arrested and he was shot soon after.
His wife worked for decades to earn his rehabilitation, a goal she finally
achieved in 1956. It was not until 1989 that the records of Klucis’s
assassination were revealed.

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Photomontage as a new problem in agit art

Gustav Klutsis
Literatura i
iskusstvo (1931)
.
A photomontage is a complex of elements organized according to a specific
method, the so-called montage method. These elements are:

1. the political slogan — a quotation, a caption, etc.:

2. the photograph of some social act or event as the pictorial element
(including documentary photographs);
3. color for activation;
4. graphic elements;
5. the planar and perspectival design for the synthetic execution of
photomontage and graphic representation.

The method of photomontage is divided into two organically related

processes:

1. preparation of the individual elements (the photomechanical

processes);
2. the process of montage itself (combination and organization of the
elements).

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To ensure the utmost activation of the materials photomontage employs the

following principles for the organization of its materials (montage):

1. use of different scales (with the aim of heightening the impact of the
work and replacing the traditional and restrictive use of perspective)
which itself offers very significant compositional possibilities;
2. use of highly contrasting colors and forms;
3. activation through liberated placement of elements (cutting them out
from the passive background and actively coloring them; employing
extreme contrasts of chromatic and achromatic color).

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The production of a poster proceeds in the following sequence of steps:

1. IzoGIZ commission;
2. development of the theme (the content of the poster);
3. development of the overall structure (construction of the poster);

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4. taking the relevant photographs in the factories and plants;

5. process of montage (organization).

The principal task as far as organization of the materials is concerned is to

manifest the class significance of the issue (the significance of the political
slogan involved). One of the great merits of photomontage is precisely the
way in which it has facilitated a new method for producing essentially militant
posters. It is a characteristic feature of the latter that the poster surface is
articulated and defined by the political content of the presented materials
rather than by aesthetic principles. The old system for the composition of
posters, based on the aesthetic principle, must be liquidated (by eliminating
the framing border within the poster). The new principle is based upon the
combination (montage) of topical materials (political slogans, documentary
photographs, quotations, color, graphic elements, etc.) that present a
consistent political line and take account of the concrete position of the viewer
precisely in order to achieve the maximum expressive impact, political clarity
and effective influence. This is the reason for the political significance and
formal specificity of this principle. This also clarifies the fundamental
difference between photomontage on the one hand, as a synthetic art that
presents a number of essentially interdependent elements, and photography
as a technical category on the other.

The photograph fixes a static moment, an isolated shot. Photomontage

visualizes the dialectical unfolding of a theme of the given subject, the
dialectical unity between political slogan and representation. Photography and
the photograph are technical means for creating a representational form, they
constitute documentary material but they are not ends in themselves.

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Like any other art, photomontage solves the problem of so-called pictoriality
by presenting the manifold and interrelated character of reality, by revealing
the concrete manifestations of the constructive socialist project precisely
through the combination of elements (the method of photomontage).

Photomontage is not a form but a method — a method that does not start
from form, but from the conditions that determine all form: the task specific
to the individual poster (or book, etc.), the broad mass for whom the
individual work is intended, the relevant location (square, street, window
display, department store), the processes of mass production (printing
techniques).

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Each work is treated in a different manner in accordance with the specific

conditions of the individual concrete case. By its very essence, the technique
of photomontage resists canonization and excludes the clichés of aesthetic
convention. Its fundamental aim is to foreground the given phenomena in a
dialectical manner, i.e. in their relationship to other forms and according to
their significance for further development.

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Posted in articles, images, media, writings

Tagged agitprop, Constructivism, Gustav Klutsis, Kazimir Malevich, Marxism,

photomontage, Russian Revolution, Stakhanovism

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12 THOUGHTS ON “GUSTAV KLUTSIS, REVOLUTIONARY PROPAGANDIST (1895-

1938)”

Pingback: Gustav Klutsis, revolutionary propagandist (1895-1938) — The

Charnel-House – Greek Canadian Literature

David Michael Newstead

— OCTOBER 12, 2016 AT 11:01 PM

Gustav Klutsis is the best. Here’s some more images if you’re interested.
https://philosophyofshaving.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/the-art-of-gustav-
klutsis-vlad-men-companion-piece/

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mcmenguc
— OCTOBER 13, 2016 AT 7:49 AM

Reblogged this on İSKEMLE.

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Charnel-House – Aya's Margins

Prole Center
— OCTOBER 13, 2016 AT 10:40 PM

“On 17 January 1938, Klucis was secretly arrested and he was shot soon after
. . . It was not until 1989 that the records of Klucis’s assassination were
revealed.”

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03/01/2021 Gustav Klutsis, revolutionary propagandist (1895-1938) | The Charnel-House

Why was he arrested? What was the charge? Do you have any proof he was
innocent? That’s also an interesting choice of words you used –
“assassination.”

What’s your agenda? Why are you so interested in constantly demonizing

Stalin? Whose interests does that serve?

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Prole Center
— OCTOBER 13, 2016 AT 10:48 PM

What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets?

There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and
colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be
seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.

– Joseph Stalin

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FANTASTIC STRUCTURES
“Comrades!

The twin fires of war and revolution have devastated both our souls and our cities.
The palaces of yesterday’s grandeur stand as burnt-out skeletons. The ruined cities
await new builders[…]

To you who accept the legacy of Russia, to you who will (I believe!) tomorrow
become masters of the whole world, I address the question: with what fantastic
structures will you cover the fires of yesterday?” ⎯ Vladimir Maiakovskii, “An Open
Letter to the Workers” (1918)

“Utopia transforms itself into actuality. The fairy tale becomes a reality. The contours
of socialism will become overgrown with iron flesh, filled with electric blood, and
begin to dwell full of life. The speed of socialist building outstrips the most audacious

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daring. In this lies the distinctive character and essence of the epoch.” ⎯ I.
Chernia,“The Cities of Socialism” (1929)

“The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended
even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating
structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.” ⎯ El Lissitzky, The Reconstruction of
Architecture in the Soviet Union (1929)

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