Patriotic poster against the Germans

The artists of the Russian avant-garde were not satisfied with merely understanding and replicating folk art. Through painting and applied arts, they sought to find the forms and techniques that would constitute the alphabet of the new art. A group of artists and poets from the first generation of the avant-garde saw in the "primitif" technique of folk woodcuts, known as "lubki," the missing communicative element in the ornamental art of modernism. "Lubki" first appeared in Russia in the 16th century and were woodcuts with folk representations that had religious, educational, and decorative purposes. The so-called "contemporary lubki" depicted patriotic scenes from the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, and World War I. Artists like Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Mayakovsky created "contemporary lubki" for propaganda purposes. In Kazimir Malevich's "Patriotic poster against the Germans," printed by the publishing house "Today's Lubok," a Russian peasant woman is depicted killing an Austrian soldier with her pitchfork, while the Austrian soldier appears tiny in comparison to the dominant peasant woman. Vladimir Mayakovsky's couplet, "An Austrian went to Radziwill / But ended up on a peasant woman's pitchfork" accompanies the lithograph.