Somewhere in Sweden

What goes around comes around, right? Henning Cedmar-Brandstedt kindly drew my attention to a sweet bit of serendiptous trivia today… it seems that in 1933, a mere three years after El Lissitzy designed his famous poster Russische Ausstellung 1929 (a copy of which I have hanging in my home and about which I posted last year here), the Swedish Socialist Party (Women’s League) created a valaffisch (election poster) which borrows directly the ‘merged heads’ (depicting gender equality) first used by El Lissitzky. The kicker? In a 2006 poll of Swedish union members the derivative poster was voted as “the best looking poster in Swedish history”—methinks El Lissitzky would be proud. See the 1933 poster and images of other poll finalists in LO Tidningin articles (in Swedish) here and here.

Thanks, Henning!