Talking Posters of Silent Film. Film Poster Masterpieces of the 1920s-1930s from the Alexander Dobrovinsky Collection

Academic consultants and authors of texts: Stanislav Dedinsky, Natalie Ryabchikova

As part of the Photobiennale 2026 the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents an exhibition of Soviet film poster masterpieces of the 1920s to 1930s from the collection of renowned lawyer, writer and collector Alexander Dobrovinsky. The project, timed to coincide with the 130th anniversary of cinema in Russia, will explore what was shown on screen a century ago, and the development of Russian cinema. The exhibition features works by outstanding artists Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir and Georgy Stenberg, Anton Lavinsky, Semyon Semyonov-Menes, Nikolai Prusakov, Mikhail Dlugach, and other masters whose names have entered the history of art and world design.

The Soviet twenties were a time of vibrant creative experimentation. Artists, photographers and directors sought new visual languages ​​and developed artistic systems able to reflect the spirit of the era. For the Soviet government, who sought to rebuild the old world and “reforge” humanity, culture simultaneously served as an effective tool of ideology and propaganda. The Bolsheviks almost immediately declared cinematography to be “the most important of all the arts”. It was to become the primary mouthpiece of new values, and by 1923 each republic was instructed to create its own national film studio. It was assumed that domestic cinema could supplant the foreign films that dominated the screens and become a profitable industry. These expectations often ran counter to reality. Early revolutionary propaganda films enjoyed far less success with audiences than Hollywood or European comedies, westerns and romances starring luminaries such as Max Linder, Mary Pickford, Buster Keaton and Ossi Oswalda. 

Cinema needed advertising, and the poster became the principal means of attracting viewers' attention not only to imported movies, but also to domestic films. The “street picture” that replaced classical easel painting appealed to a wider audience and successfully fulfilled the tasks of visual propaganda and advertising. A spectacular film poster essentially served as a film trailer — in just moments it had to convince passersby to head for the cinema. 

In 1924 a special advertising department was established within the newly founded state association Sovkino, which controlled film production and distribution. It was led by the artist Yakov Ruklevsky, who recruited young and talented graphic artists to work on posters. Among them were Georgy and Vladimir Stenberg, Nikolai Prusakov, Grigory Borisov, Alexander Naumov, Mikhail Dlugach, Leonid Voronov and Iosif Gerasimovich. Soviet film posters brought together representatives from a wide range of artistic movements, from radical avant-garde artists to staunch realists, and soon gained an unprecedented scale, becoming one of the most notable phenomena in 20th-century Russian culture. Art critic Yakov Tugendhold wrote: “Our film poster has overtaken all other genres of the poster … each new movie immediately flaunts its posters on the walls of our homes, clamouring and beckoning in every possible way”.

The Stenberg brothers achieved the greatest success in film poster art — they were key figures of early Cconstructivism, theatre designers and co-organisers of the Constructivist Laboratory, where experiments in form-creation were conducted. Beginning in 1925, they created some 300 movie posters which became classics of world film poster art, developing a distinctive graphic style that influenced subsequent generations of artists. This is how the Stenbergs described the principles of their work: “We create a striking poster that could, so to speak, stun the viewer … and we use everything that can stop even a hurrying passerby”. They masterfully played with colour and extreme close-ups, the proportions of objects and figures, actively employing Suprematist and Cubo-Futurist techniques, dizzying camera angles and sans-serif fonts. Their sharp and dynamic compositions were consonant with the very language of cinema.

The mid-1920s was the golden age of domestic silent cinema, largely associated with the formation of the Soviet school of editing. Director Lev Kuleshov began experimenting with editing techniques as early as 1918. He was one of the first to demonstrate that a film is born on the editing table, and its meaning and audience perception are radically altered depending on the sequence of shots. Today this theory is known worldwide as the “Kuleshov effect”. In 1923 the great director Sergei Eisenstein formulated his revolutionary concept of the “montage of attractions”, according to which every element of a film should subject the viewer to a “sensory or psychological impact, calibrated and mathematically calculated to produce specific emotional shocks”. Footage from filmed scenes could be reassembled in any order to enhance a particular effect. Over the course of three years, from 1924 to 1927, Eisenstein made three films that changed the history of world cinema and modern culture as a whole: “Strike”, “Battleship Potemkin”, and “October”. The exhibition features key fragments from these legendary films, as well as posters for them created by the Russian avant-garde artists Alexander Rodchenko, Anton Lavinsky, and other masters.

The modernist poetics of montage became a new mode of artistic vision and thinking. Photomontage, a method consistently developed by Alexander Rodchenko that powerfully influenced poster art along with film editing, became a crucial discovery in the visual arts of the early 1920s. A large separate section of the exhibition is devoted to photomontage in film posters.

The exhibition “Talking Posters of Silent Film. Film Poster Masterpieces of the 1920s-1930s from the Alexander Dobrovinsky Collection” introduces viewers to the major genres of foreign and Russian cinema in those years: from action-packed spy films to historical-revolutionary films, from situation comedies to satirical films that mocked the lifestyle of the NEP men and the Western bourgeoisie. In the exhibition's cinema hall visitors can experience what it was like to be a moviegoer in the early 20th century and watch iconic films of the era. These include “The Case of the Three Million” (1926, directed by Yakov Protazanov) and “The Girl with a Hatbox” (1927, directed by Boris Barnet).

As part of the exhibition MAMM will present an extensive educational programme with the participation of film scholars and film historians, as well as special silent film screenings with live piano accompaniment.

MAMM is grateful to Maxim Pavlov for assistance in preparing the exhibition.