The Daily Heller: Pin-Ups From the USSR

Posted inThe Daily Heller
By Steven HellerPosted  ∙  2 min. read

Ephemera is mother’s milk for graphic designers, and in recent years they have suckled on the teat of a growing number of book and poster sellers.

Why is collecting increasing internationally? Early to mid-20th century ephemera often comes with an entire history. This is why Productive Arts is invaluable. Every quarter year or so, they offer a cache of material, like the calendars here, that surprise and delight—not just as objects of art, but for what they tell about society at the time they were made.

These wall-scaled pin-ups show that the sexiest thing in the USSR under Josef Stalin was machinery—the very same vehicles, engines and other products that took Russia from the agrarian 19th century to a mechanical and industrial superpower.

“Star” Automatic Wall Calendar for Twenty-One Years, 1915–1935, ca. 1927.
Torgsin Calendar for 1935. Torgsin operated state stores in larger Russian cities from 1931–1936, trading in foreign currency.
Technoexport Calendars for 1936 in English, German and French promoting USSR machinery exports.
Pravda Vostoka Calendar for 1928. Wall calendar for the newspaper Truth of the East published in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Sakharov, S.; Kusinov, K. Mashinoeksport Calendar for 1955. Russian language calendar promoting large machinery
Childrens’ Calendar for 1947. Late design by Natan Altman in the Russian language, including post-war holidays for victories over Germany and Japan.
Soviet Land Calendars for 1961. Six sheet English language calendar with two months per sheet. Painterly graphics consistent with the period style.
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Posted inHistory ∙ The Daily Heller

Steven Heller has written for PRINT since the 1980s. He is co-chair of SVA MFA Designer as Entrepreneur. The author, co-author and editor of over 200 books on design and popular culture, Heller is also the recipient of the Smithsonian Institution National Design Award for "Design Mind," the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement and other honors. He was a senior art director at The New York Times for 33 years and a writer of obituaries and book review columnist for the newspaper, as well. His memoir, Growing Up Underground (Princeton Architectural Press) was published in 2022. Some of his recent essays are collected in For the Love of Design (Allworth Press).

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