Political Posters in Central and Eastern Europe 1945-95

The political poster was one of the most widely discredited and closely policed aspects of cultural life in the former Communist Bloc. As a weapon in an ideologically defined social struggle for human emancipation and as a medium of critical engagement, the poster had a decisive political and social status it could never aspire to in the West. The poster's history is a story of aesthetic, political and finally, national liberation. The nature of the political poster can be seen to move from the empty rhetorics of political sloganeering to become a weapon of criticism and resistance. This comprehensively illustrated analysis of political poster design - drawn from major collections in Bellorussia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and the Ukraine - exemplifies the aesthetic diversity of the region under communist rule.