Curator, Ellen Lupton: We're looking at a poster by Natalia Pinus, featuring a woman worker in the foreground and behind her are spools of thread in a factory. And we see through the windows children are being supervised in what looks like a wonderful sunny playground.
The poster is made with a combination of photographic and hand-drawn imagery. So, you might think of a factory as a harsh and cold and noisy place, but by mixing that color yellow with the black and white photographs, the artist is really able to create this feeling of warmth and happiness, and the sense of pride that this woman has in working in the factory and, and being surrounded by well-cared-for children.
Many of these posters reflected the rise of social realism as an official style in Soviet design. It became an official policy in the thirties to create highly legible posters with very clear idealized images of Soviet workers.
Professor Stephen Kotkin: An artist can't be separated from the masses in a socialist revolution. The artist is producing, not works of art per se, but is producing techniques to mobilize the masses on behalf of the revolutionary aims. So the artist is like a worker in a workshop, churning out images to be put up on the wall in factories, public places, in order for people to be enthused and themselves want to participate in creating this new world.