Theater Posters from the Soviet Union, 1960–1990: Selections from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection

This exhibition features some thirty theater posters by various artists from the former Soviet Union. For these artists, theatrical posters provided the opportunity to go beyond the limits of socialist realist art and embrace major trends in modern and contemporary Western art, since what was unacceptable to the Soviet authorities in painting was often allowed in theater design. The posters in the exhibition demonstrate the diversity of graphic solutions employed by Soviet artists and the influence of modernist movements such as surrealism, op art, and pop art. They also illuminate the range and variety of plays staged in the former Soviet Union, including both Russian and foreign classics, and contemporary Soviet and Western drama.

As demonstrated by this exhibition, numerous innovations brought about by the Russian Constructivists of the 1920s—the introduction of implied movement, the expressive use of typography and color, the distortion of scale and perspective—were rediscovered and extended by Soviet poster designers in the 1970s and 80s.

Reflecting Norton Dodge's interest in the art of former Soviet republics, especially the Baltics, the Dodge collection includes not only posters created in Moscow and Leningrad but also posters designed by Baltic artists. Theirs and the other posters on display represent a flowering of graphic design in the Soviet Union before its collapse.

Curated by Alla Rosenfeld.