After El Lissitzky…
Somewhere in Sweden
What goes around comes around, right? Henning Cedmar-Brandstedt kindly drew my attention to a sweet bit of serendiptous trivia today… it seems that in 1933, a mere three years after El Lissitzy designed his famous poster Russische Ausstellung 1929 (a copy of which I have hanging in my home and about which I posted last year here), the Swedish Socialist Party (Women’s League) created a valaffisch (election poster) which borrows directly the ‘merged heads’ (depicting gender equality) first used by El Lissitzky. The kicker? In a 2006 poll of Swedish union members the derivative poster was voted as “the best looking poster in Swedish history”—methinks El Lissitzky would be proud.
Thanks, Henning!