?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
STENBERG BROTHERS / VLADIMIR (1899-1982) & GEORGI (1900-1933) [THROUGH THE FLAMES.] 1927. 40x27 7/8 inches. Sovkino, Moscow. Condition A-: restored losses and repaired tears along vertical and horizontal folds. Paper. The Stenberg Brothers (Vladimir and Georgi) revolutionized the concept of the movie poster in the 1920s with their innate sense of design, and a technique of their own devising whereby photos from movies were projected onto canvases and traced in order to create photomontages. Having been given total artistic freedom within the early years of the new Soviet state, they were the first to abandon the standard promotional technique of realistically depicting movie scenes on posters. In this American film (Through the Flames, 1923), "Richard Talmadge portrays a fireman who has to resign because of his extreme sensitivity to smoke. His rivals accuse him of cowardice, but he proves his bravery by capturing a gang of robbers who have been setting fires to hide the evidence of their crimes" (Pack p. 223). The architecturally constructed image uses the ever-tightening striations in the background and the orange color of flames to signal both rising fire and tension. The drama of the poster is boosted by the jarring angle at which the typography cuts across the image. Stenberg/MOMA p.15, Pack p. 223, Soviet Film p. 73.
![STENBERG BROTHERS / VLADIMIR (1899-1982) & GEORGI (1900-1933) [THROUGH THE FLAMES.] 1927. 40x27 inches. Sovkino, Moscow.](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//516\587516.jpg)
