Artist unknown
Colored lithograph, backed on Japon paper
28 x 42 inches (71,1 x 106,6 cm)
Excellent

RARE Russian poster with Constructivist style graphics for the German film - Lucrezia Borgia (1922), starring Conrad Veidt, Liane Haid, Albert Bassermann, Paul Wegener and Anita Berber. Directed by Richard Oswald. Richard-Oswald-Producktion production; distributed by Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft [UFA]. Scenario by Richard Oswald, from a novel by Harry Scheff. Art direction by Botho Hoefer and Robert Neppach. Costume design by Robert Neppach. Cinematography by Karl Freund, Carl Drews and Karl Vash. Released 20 October 1922.

RUSSIAN FILM POSTERS
The 1920s and early 1930s were a revolutionary period for the graphic arts throughout Europe. A drastic change took place in the way graphic designers worked that was a direct consequence of experimentation in both the fine and the applied arts. Not only did the formal vocabulary of graphic design change, but also the designer's perception of self. The concept of the designer as "constructor"—or, as the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann preferred, "monteur" (mechanic or engineer)—marked a paradigmatic shift within the field, from an essentially illustrative approach to one of assemblage and nonlinear narrativity. This new idea of assembling preexisting images, primarily photographs, into something new freed design from its previous dependence on realism. The subsequent use of collage—a defining element of modern graphic design—enabled the graphic arts to become increasingly nonobjective in character.

In Russia, these new artist-engineers were attracted to the functional arts by political ideology. The avant-gardists' rejection of the fine arts, deemed useless in a new Communist society, in favor of "art for use" in the service of the state, was key in the evolution of the poster. Advertising was now a morally superior occupation with ramifications for the new society; as such, it began to attract those outside the usual illustrative or painterly backgrounds—sculptors, architects, photographers—who brought new ideas and techniques to the field. - MOMA

Literature:
Susan Pack, Film Posters of the Russian Avant-Garde, Taschen 1995. For similar examples.