Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

The Contemporary Lubok publishing house was set up shortly after the outbreak of WWI in order to produce posters to promote patriotism. The publisher Grigory Gorodetsky commissioned the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) to supply the text while Kazimir Malevich oversaw the visual aspect. In existence for a mere three months (August until early November 1914), they succeeded in producing over fifty posters of this nature. Drawing on the traditions of Russian folk woodcuts, the lithographs were generally printed in four colours with deliberately simplistic drawings accompanying verse descriptions by Vladimir Mayakovsky.