Hungarian Revolutionary Posters and Plywood Featured in New Exhibitions at MoMA

NEW YORK, NY.- In the wake of the First World War many artists and writers were seized by a new sense of political purpose. It is widely recognized that the events of 1917 and after galvanized revolutionary aspirations among European avant-gardes and the intelligentsia. Seeing Red: Hungarian Revolutionary Posters, 1919, an installation in MoMA’s Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, featuresposters by three of Hungary’s foremost graphic artists, Mihály Biró, Sándor Bortnyik and Bertalan Pór, all of whom had been actively involved in the Socialist revolutionary movement that culminated in the short-lived Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919. The Hungarian publishing, news, and film media were all centered in Budapest, and these posters, composed with dynamic, expressive figuration, became another potent medium for influencing popular opinion. In particular, Biró’s red-hammer-wielding man became one of

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