Valentina Kulagina 

Obreras de choque, consolidad las brigadas de choque, adquirid conocimientos técnicos, ampliad las filas de los especialistas proletarios, 1931

(Women workers, women shock workers, strengthen the shock brigades, master technology, increase the ranks of proletariat specialists)

Valentina Kulagina (Moscow, Russia, 1902–1987) embodies the figure of the woman artist during the Russian avant-garde’s intense output between the 1917 revolution and the Second World War, taking part in equating art and life in the graphic arts with political commitment to the construction of the socialist world. However, art and life turned against her. Despite her constant struggle as an artist and her defence of a practice of photomontage that differed in some respects from the principles set out by Gustav Klutsis and defended by members of the October group, of which she was also a member, she encountered some reticence in the reception of her posters. Moreover, the arrest and subsequent execution in 1938 of Klutsis, whom she had married in 1921, conditioned her later career. She worked as a photomontage designer for the Vsesoyuznaya Selsko-Khozyaystvennaya Vystavka (All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, 1941), but after the war she was excluded from official projects.

Kulagina trained as a painter and graphic designer at the Vkhutemas in Moscow between 1920 and 1922, and she attended the debates about art and aesthetics held by the Suprematists, Constructivists and Productivists concerning the utilitarian aim of constructions and tests and experiments with materials, colour and forms. This coincided with the definitive formulation of a form of state propaganda art in which photography, typography and photomontage became the ideal communication media with which to address an immense, largely illiterate population. As a graphic designer she worked for Izogiz, the state publishing house for the visual arts, and for VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), for which she made posters, books and exhibition designs. Also noteworthy was her participation in the Soviet Union pavilion in the international press exhibition Pressa (Cologne, 1928), in Fotomontage (Berlin, 1931) and in the exhibition Plakat na sluzhbe piatiletki (The Poster in the Service of the Five-Year Plan, Tretyakov, Moscow, 1932), and, among other things, her collaboration with Klutsis on urban propaganda devices in Moscow, such as the “Avenue of Posters” project (1932).

In Kulagina’s work as a graphic designer there are two outstanding aspects that can be seen in the poster Rabotnitsi-udarnitsi, krepite udarniye brigady, ovladevayte tejnikoi, uvelichivayte kadry proletarskij spetsialistov. On the one hand, the role that she reserves in her compositions for the working woman, whom she converts into the main figure, placing her in laboratories, factories, the fields or leading demonstrations. She herself demanded – as did Stalin’s political agenda – that women should have access to the same rights in the workplace as men, with recognition of the fact that women were a necessary force in social transformation and for socialist construction in equality of conditions. In this regard, the poster designs that she made for International Working Women’s Day in 1930 and 1931 are worthy of mention.

On the other hand, her practice of photomontage was characterised by a defence of manual work and drawing, as opposed to the construction of images and messages dominated by photographic elements of which Klutsis approved. In her case, the incorporation of photographs was relegated to a secondary level, or else they were enhanced with layers of colour. However, in the context of the pressure applied by her husband because of the need for effective propaganda, in this poster Kulagina seems to combine both approaches. In it we can see some of the devices defined or employed by Klutsis, such as the inclusion of the textual slogan and the fan-shaped repetition of figures taken from photographs, in this case forming two ellipses: the women scientists in the laboratory describe an inner curve and the women in the factory, wearing red kerchiefs, are arranged in an outer curve. They are all performing work that requires concentration, knowledge and precision. She also uses photographic material to construct the setting for this message: factories, cranes and industrial infrastructure. The mark of Kulagina can be seen in her alteration of the photographs, painting the attribute of revolutionary woman on the women’s heads, iconography that had been created and disseminated through propaganda; in the emphasis applied to the constructive aspects by the grid of lines in the background; and in the prominence given to the female force by covering the arm of the worker in the foreground with blue.

This poster was probably made in the second half of 1931, after John Heartfield’s visit to Moscow in June and July at the invitation of the International Office of Revolutionary Artists and the presentation of the solo exhibition that was organised for him. The arrival of the German artist contributed to an intense debate and exchange of opinions, including those of Klutsis and Kulagina, about the possibilities and objectives of political photomontage, and also about its origin and its creators.

References

Maria Gough: “Back in the USSR: John Heartfield, Gustavs Klucis, and the Medium of Soviet Propaganda”. New German Critique, no. 107 (Dada and Photomontage across Borders), Summer 2009, pp. 133–183.

Margarita Tupitsyn: Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina. Photography and Montage after Constructivism. International Center of Photography, New York / Steidl, Göttingen, 2004.

Gustav Klucis. Retrospectiva. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid / Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart, 1991.

Rocío Robles Tardío, 50 Obras maestras 1900-1950, IVAM, València, 2019, p. 56.