May 10, 2016 - Sale 2414

Sale 2414 - Lot 49

Price Realized: $ 4,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
MIKHAIL O. DLUGACH (1893-1985) [4TH OZET LOTTERY HELPS BIROBIDZHAN AND THE JEWISH NATIONAL AREAS.] 1932.
41 3/4x26 inches, 106x66 cm.
Condition B: extensive overpainting in margins, image and text; repaired tears, creases and restoration in margins and image and along vertical and horizontal folds. Fading in image.
The All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR (OVET) was the public counterpart to the official State Committee for Settling Jews on the Land (KOMZET). Their purpose was to encourage and support the agricultural settlements (specifically Birobidzhan) of Jewish citizens following a collapse in the economic sector, which once supported the majority of Jewish workers. The lottery, advertised here, was one of many fundraising programs created toward financing these efforts, which were at times opposed by both the public and state following shifting political ideologies. Dlugach, who studied art in Kiev is best known for the prodigious number of movie posters he designed, many quite stylistically similar to the work of the Stenberg Brothers. In the years after World War II he added circus advertisements, medals and exhibition design to his repertoire. He also designed a handful of propaganda posters several of which are quite accomplished photomontages, as evidenced here. Drawing on the stylistic influence of Gustav Klutsis he employs an industrial aesthetic and Constructivist photomontage technique to manipulate size and space in this incisive and dynamic design. Power of Images p. 209.