JAPAN AVANT-GARDE 1920-1935

The global influence of Constructivism in graphic design and typography was apparent wherever the left-wing thought had taken root. The Japanese book design shows clearly how the Constructivism had penetrated this very differently visual and graphic tradition – with the publications marking the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, and various Marxist publications.

Indirectly, this phenomenon, points out to the fact that the Avant-Garde design and progressive thought have overlapped and that the Constructivism remained strongly identified with the ideas of Socialist subversion. The bureaucratic nature of the Societ Unio and its turning toward the totalitarian Stalinism, reflected in the visual art and culture starting in the middle 1920s when the Avant-Garde artists and tendencies were pushed to the margin of society.

The process concluded in 1932 with the inauguration of socialist realism as an aesthetic program gloryfying the triumph of the socialst revolution. The Constructivist period was officially terminated. It’s legacy is one of the most influential aesthetic agendas of the 20th century.