
Claire Tole-Moir
Head of Department
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£300 - £500
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Head of Department

Senior Specialist
Provenance:
From the The Caroline Coon Archive. Caroline recalls buying these posters with Paul Simonon of The Clash: 'We bought the posters in Moscow in January 1978 - before Perestroika - when Leonid Brezhnev was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Against the monochrome Moscow backdrop, looming large over many streets, were brightly coloured socio-political propaganda posters. At that time there were no shops as such in the Soviet Union. We briefly escaped from our guide and came across a shop that blazed with colour! It only sold posters, hundreds of the incredible Soviet posters that we had actually seen in Moscow, but also many in the style we knew so well, and admired, from art history books. It was the first time we had actually seen how these huge posters were put together in sections (it was possible to buy huge posters in 20 sections!). Not only were the posters spectacular popular art but they gave Paul Simonon of The Clash ideas for the artwork and promotional material for the album the band were working on at the time (their second), "Give 'Em Enough Rope" (1978).