The Art Institute of Chicago Presents Soviet TASS Posters at Home & Abroad, 1941–1945

Written by Aleksandr Denisovich Thursday, 29 December 2011 20:35

Chicago, IL.- The Art Institute of Chicago is pleased to present "Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941–1945" from July 31st through October 23rd. In 1997, 26 tightly wrapped brown paper parcels were discovered deep in a storage area for the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Prints and Drawings. Their presence was a mystery, their contents a puzzle. As conservators and curators carefully worked to open the envelopes, they were surprised and intrigued to find that they contained 50-year-old monumental posters created by TASS, the Soviet Union’s news agency. The idea for a major exhibition began to take shape. Impressively large—between five and ten feet tall—and striking in the vibrancy and texture of the stencil medium, these posters were sent abroad, including to the Art Institute, to serve as international cultural “ambassadors” and to rally allied and neutral nations to the endeavors of the Soviet Union, a partner of the United States and Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany.

In "Windows on the War", these posters will be presented both as unique historical objects and as works of art that demonstrate how the preeminent artists of the day used unconventional technical and aesthetic means to contribute to the fight against the Nazis, marking a major chapter in the history of design and propaganda. While the exhibition’s focus is primarily on the 157 posters on display, viewers will also find their rich historical and cultural context revealed through photographs and documentary material illuminating the visual culture of US–USSR relations before and during the war. "Windows on the War" is not only a fascinating glimpse into one of the most significant government-sponsored cultural efforts of the 20th century but also a major scholarly undertaking that brings these posters into the public eye for the first time in six decades.

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) was originally founded as the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in1879 to be both a museum and school. It moved to its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. Two significant improvements to the building followed soon after, the Fullerton Auditorium was added in 1898 and the Ryerson Library in 1901. In 1913 the museum startled the city by hosting the Armory Show, a sprawling exhibition of avant-garde European painting and sculpture. Exceptional purchases from that controversial exhibition launched the museum's collection of modern art. Expansion of the museum was again required to suitably display a collection that now included nearly every artistic medium and the solution was to build over the Illinois Central Railroad tracks that bordered the Art Institute's east wall. The growth of the professional staff led to the completion of the first major new structure in more than 20 years, the B. F. Ferguson Memorial Building was added in the 1950s. The dramatic increase of the contemporary art collection and the popularity of large traveling exhibitions led to the construction of the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building in 1988. In the 1990s, the Art Institute constructed a new suite of galleries to house its Asian collection. In 2006, the Art Institute began construction of "The Modern Wing", an addition situated on the southwest corner of Columbus and Monroe. The project, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, was completed and officially opened to the public on May 16, 2009. The 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) building makes the Art Institute the second largest art museum in the United States with over a million square feet total. The collection of the Art Institute of Chicago encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world and contains more than 260,000 works of art.

Today, the museum is most famous for its collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and American paintings. Considered one of the finest in the world, the collection of European painting contains more than 3,500 works dating from the 12th through the mid-20th century. Holdings include a rare group of 15th-century Spanish, Italian and Northern European paintings, highlights of European sculpture, and an important selection of 17th- and 18th-century paintings. Major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works and classic Modern works are among its most significant holdings. Included in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection are more than 30 paintings by Claude Monet including six of his Haystacks and a number of Water Lilies. Also in the collection are important works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir such as “Two Sisters (On the Terrace)” and Henri Matisse's “The Bathers”, Paul Cézanne's “The Basket of Apples”, and “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair”. “At the Moulin Rouge” by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is another highlight, as are Georges Seurat's “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” and Gustave Caillebotte's “Paris Street; Rainy Day”. Non-French paintings of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection include Vincent Van Gogh's “Bedroom in Arles” and “Self-portrait, 1887”.


The Department of American Art includes more than 1,500 paintings and sculptures from the 18th century to 1950 and nearly 2,500 decorative art objects from the 17th century to the present. Strengths in the collection include the Alfred Stieglitz Collection and significant groups of work by John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt and Winslow Homer. Modernist holdings include iconic images by Grant Wood, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. Among the most important works are Grant Wood's “American Gothic”, Edward Hopper's “Nighthawks” and Mary Cassatt's “The Child's Bath”. The foundation’s collection of American works on paper are housed in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute. Institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago have assisted in creating a place for African American art to be explored freely without the restraints that once accompanied it. The pieces included in the Art Institute of Chicago's African American art collection provide a historical illustration of the progress made by African Americans as well as their continuing struggle. The American Decorative Arts galleries contain furniture pieces designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames. The Amerindian collection primarily focuses upon Mesoamerican and Andean ceramics, sculpture, textiles, and metalwork. Native North American Indian works, particularly from the Plains Indians, the Southwest, and California, are also on view. The Art Institute's distinguished Asian collection comprises works spanning nearly five millennia from China, Korea, Japan, India, southwest Asia, and the Near and Middle East. It includes 35,000 objects of great archaeological and artistic significance, including Chinese bronzes, ceramics, and archaic jades; Chinese and Japanese textiles; Japanese screens and paintings; Indian and Persian miniature paintings; and Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture. The collection of Japanese woodblock prints is one of the finest in the world. The African collection includes over 400 works that highlight the diversity of artistic expression on the continent south of the Sahara, with emphasis on the sculptural traditions of West and Central Africa. Included are masks and figural sculpture, beadwork, furniture, regalia, and textiles from countries including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa. The Art Institute’s collection of over 80 African ceramics is the largest in an American art museum. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman galleries hold the mummy and mummy case of Paankhenamun, as well as several gold and silver coins. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.artic.edu/aic/

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