Russland Bolshevik Political Poster by Apsit, 1918; Soviet Union

This is a fine reproduction of the Russland Bolshevik Political Poster by Alexander Petrovich Apsit. Apsit was born in Riga on 25th March 1880. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1894 and attended art school and became a student of Lew Dmitriew-Kawkaski. Aspit worked for various Russian magazines. On the outbreak of the First World War, he was employed by the government to design war posters. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Apsit was commissioned by the State Publishing House to design revolutionary posters. The Year of Proletarian Dictatorship was produced in October 1918, for the first anniversary of the revolution. It shows the key elements of the revolutionary poster's imagery: a farmer with a red flag and scythes in the foreground, and a blacksmith with a hammer crushing the emblems of fallen capitalism - both as guards in front of a field of simple flags in the background an industrialized city and a rising sun. After the war, he worked in Latvia as a book illustrator. In addition, he designed advertising posters and greeting cards, as well as the wrapping paper of chocolates and sweets from the company Vilhelms Ķuze. In 1939, Apsit moved to Nazi Germany, where he died in 1943. Alexander Apsit died in Ludwigslust on 19th September 1943.