?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY (1893-1930) ROSTA WINDOWS. Circa 1920. Sizes vary, each approximately 25x16 inches. Condition varies, generally B+: one with restored loss in lower left corner; all with minor tears at edges and wrinkles in image. Paper. In the years immediately following Russia's October Revolution, the avant-garde artists devoted all of their creative efforts to support the Bolsheviks. Their primary vehicle was posters they designed for the Russian Telegraphic Agency (ROSTA) that are familiarly referred to as Rosta Windows. Modeled after the traditional Russian lubok, wood block prints, these stenciled sheets were hung in stations, on buildings, and in empty shop windows. Their messages were news-related, but always pro-party and propagandistic. Generally, the mini-series consisted of four images, but in some cases as many as twelve were used. "The dominant figure in the ROSTA collective was the poet and artist Vladimir Maykovsky" (Bolshevik Poster p. 72). Mayakovsky was the renaissance avant-garde reactionary: an activist from the age of 14, he entered the Moscow School of Painting in 1911. He founded Lef a key magazine for the avant-garde movement, was a poet, play-write and graphic designer. He worked tirelessly on the ROSTA posters designing thousands of them, and acting as the virtual director of the studio. He took his own life in 1930. Here the images are calling for coal miners to increase their productivity, to beat the previous year's extractions. It also reminds miners how important they are and asks "have you redoubled your strength on the labor front". All of the ROSTA windows were numbered: this is number 898.
