Study for slogan for the setting of the propaganda play "Effervescent Earth" based on "Night" by Marcel Martin translated by Sergei Gorodetsky and edited by Sergei Tretyakov and directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold, GosTIM, Moscow

Study for slogan for the setting of the propaganda play "Effervescent Earth" based on "Night" by Marcel Martin translated by Sergei Gorodetsky and edited by Sergei Tretyakov and directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold, GosTIM, Moscow. 1923. Ink, gouache and paper collage on paper. 18 x 23. Text: Keep up the Revolutionary pace. These political slogans were an essential element in the production of Zemlia dybom (Effervescent Earth) (no. 417). They underlined the politically radical character of the work and its topicality. Many of the slogans were new but there were also old ones, such as Long Live the Union of Workers and Peasants and Whoever does not work does not eat. They were the same size and were written with the thick straight elements, the sans serifs, that characterize constructivist typography because they were considered to express a mechanical aesthetic. The technological echoes are stronger than in her 1921 designs for the banner of the All-Russian Union of Poets, with polygraph-like letters arranged disorderly against a background of abstract shapes (no. 434). Adhering to a strict economy of means (letters, elements, arrays and sometimes color) Popova created a huge variety of graphic solutions. He brought life to the slogans he designed, with asymmetrical spacing, isolating and framing words, emphasizing certain elements, using horizontal and vertical lines of varying thickness (usually black but sometimes red). Also, she used different sizes of letters in the same slogan, lengthening or thickening them. Sometimes Popova departed from this shape, as for example when she places the text on a yellow swastika, an Indian symbol of good luck and prosperity (no. 420). Productivism.