On April 24, 2010 the Museum in Szreniawa is planning to launch an international poster exhibition “Crops for the State! Agriculture and the Countryside in the 1950s Propaganda Poster of Central and Eastern Europe”. Held in an old barn, the exhibition is meant to show through the poster medium a fragment of a shared history of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, the GDR, republics of former Yugoslavia and of the Soviet Union.

The show includes 212 posters and bills, 45 of which are for logistical considerations exhibited in digital form. The posters are arranged in the following thematic sections: collective farms; timely work, mandatory supplies; agriculture plans; an alliance of workers and peasants; work leadership and patterns; People's authorities, elections, friendship with the USSR; mechanisation and electrification; an image of the peasant; an image of the woman; children and young people; prosperity and peace; exhibitions, fairs, harvest festivals, fetes; education and culture; fighting the Colorado beetle; political satire, fighting the kulak.

Lovers of poster art will not miss works signed by the “great” names of Polish graphic designers, such as e.g. Mieczysław Kościelniak, Witold Chmielewski, Józef Mroszczak, Stanisław Małecki, Gustaw Majewski, Roman Cieślewicz, Waldemar Świerzy, Włodzimierz Zakrzewski, Tadeusz Trepkowski, Lucjan Jagodziński, Stefan Wielgus, and the master of the poster of the period between the world wars, Tadeusz Gronowski.

Unique among the foreign posters on show are those by the renowned Czech illustrator Josef Lada, works untypical of the convention of the 1950s. Among Hungarian artists, the principles of socialist realism in poster art were adhered to the closest by György Pál. In turn, Soviet posters (W. Koreckiy, P. Golub, B. Berezovsky) rivet attention due to their powerful ideological content coupled with an elaborate idyllic convention of depicting characters.

The exhibition is supplemented by technical objects, propaganda publications and instruction materials from the museum’s Library. Visitors interested in the agriculture of the 1950s are more than welcome to watch propaganda films from that period from the collection of the Museum in Szreniawa. The films touch upon such issues as the foundation of production cooperatives, the activity of State Machinery Centres, the alliance of the countryside and the city, and the fight with the Colorado beetle.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with reproductions of the majority of the posters on show and texts related to the history of the countryside and agriculture in the 1950s and to the style of posters from that period.

Displayed at the exhibition are posters from the holdings of the National Museum of Agriculture and Food Industry in Szreniawa and of the following institutions:

Wielkopolskie Muzeum Walk Niepodległościowych w Poznaniu / Wielkopolska Museum of Struggle for Independence in Poznań

Muzeum Niepodległości w Warszawie / Museum of Independence in Warsaw

Muzjeju etnografiji ta chudożnogo promysłu IN NAN Ukrainy, m. Lwiw / Museum of Ethnography and Art Industry of the Institute for National Studies of the Ukrainian Academy of Science of the City of Lviv

Agrarmuseum Wandlitz / Museum of Agriculture in Wandlitz, Germany

Narodní zemědělské muzeum Praha / National Museum of Agriculture in Prague

Moravské zemské muzeum Brno / Moravian Museum in Brno, Czech Republic

Slovenské poľnohospodárske múzeum Nitra / Slovak Museum of Agriculture in Nitra

Magyar Mezôgazdasági Múzeum / Museum of Hungarian Agriculture in Budapest

Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum / Węgierskie Muzeum Narodowe / Hungarian National Museum in Budapest

Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Digital Library of Slovenia www.dLib.si / National and University Library in Ljubljana, Digital Library of Slovenia www.dLib.si

Tartu Kunstimuuseum / Museum of Art in Tartu, Estonia

Two museums contributed to the organisation of the exhibition:

Slovenski Etnografski Muzej / Slovenian Ethnographic Museum

Eesti Pőllumajandusmuuseum / Estonian Agriculture Museum

Sponsors:

Media Patrons: