Gustav Klutsis

photograph of a photomontage, mounted, credit and annotations in pencil on the mount, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1930

Walker, Usitti, and McGinnis Gallery, New York, 1996

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

Middletown, Delaware, Warner Gallery at St. Andrew's School, In Good Hands: Selected Works from the Buhl Collection, October - November 2011

Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp. 43 and 226 (this print)

Variations of this image:

Matthew S. Witkovsky, ed., Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life (Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), p. 19 (the rear cover of the journal Artist's Brigade, No. 1); and p. 63 (a lithographic poster), both with the alternate text, 'Worker Men and Women: Vote in the Soviet Elections'

This photograph is printed on single-weight paper with a semi-glossy surface. The print has light, age-appropriate silvering in the dark areas. In high raking light, what appears at first to be a slight linear indentation in the print's surface, along the top edge of the second-largest hand, may instead be an area that was retouched with pencil or pen. The photograph is mounted to paper, which shows very minor discoloration and age-darkening. None of these issues detract from the wonderful object quality of this fascinating image.
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Klutsis was a great believer in the power of photomontage to communicate political ideas to the Soviet citizens.  From the early 1920s to his death in 1938, he worked tirelessly to create images for posters, book jackets, magazines -- all in the service of the State.  Klutsis used the dynamic Constructivist composition of hands seen in the image offered here for at least two Soviet slogans.  This photograph shows Klutsis's first design, made in 1930, in which the photomontage of hands is paired with the text, 'Let Us Now Fulfill the Plan of the Great Projects.'  Later, in the same year, Klutsis paired the image with text reading, 'Worker Men and Women: Vote in the Soviet Elections.'   Both designs show how effectively the image, of the raised hands of the masses, conveyed the power of a citizenry allied in solidarity.   A full treatment of Klutsis and his work, written by Jared Ash, can be found in Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life (Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), pp. 45-66.

The inscription on the mount reads: 'Report of the 16^th assembly of the Party. Later this led to the reelection of the Soviets.'