The iconic storytelling in the Soviet Russia

Abstract

The Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the consequent collapse of the Tsarist empire led to a reorganization of the sociopolitical structure, determining a dualism between what belonged to a long–standing tradition and the future vision of a renewed society. The social transformations triggered by the young Soviet intelligencija gave rise to innovative experimentations both in the ideological and artistic fields, starting from the rethinking of collective life. Traditional methods and means of artistic expression were questioned. Figurative art and architecture began to follow a common orientation by accepting a series of aesthetic–formal issues that led to exploration of a visual language structured on the laws of psychophysical perception of the mechanical, volumetric and chromatic elements, implementing a psychoanalytic method of analysis of the form. In this context, numerous Marxist–inspired movements, such as the LEF (Left Front of the Arts) and the AKhRR (Revolutionary Russia Artists Association), professed their faith in science and technology, aspiring to the fusion between left–wing figurative art and the society of revolution. The propaganda image became the result of a “dictatorship of taste” that, through the interaction between cinema, typography and photography, divulged “the abolition of artistic fiction in favor of direct news and the use of raw life” (Elia 2008, p. 102). The essay deals with an iconographic recognition of some of the most significant propaganda images of the avant–garde Soviet production, with an emphasis on the graphic strategies and on the symbolic values adopted by the iconic Russian revolution.