The "Summer Sports in the USSR" poster was designed in 1936 by the famous Soviet graphic artist Maria Nesterova-Berzina (1897-1965) for the state travel agency "Intourist" (founded in 1929 in the USSR), as part of an advertising campaign aimed at the Western public.
The influence of the Art Deco style is clearly visible in the composition and the variety of colours of these "Intourist" posters. This stylistic choice can be explained by the desire of the project's organisers and graphic designers to address the Western public through an understandable and familiar visual language. This "westernisation" of the images in the Art Deco style is intended to give a positive image of the Soviet Union as the land of socialism, in the tradition of Soviet propaganda posters. The poster "Summer Sports in the USSR" can be interpreted through an ideological lens. It shows a rowing team racing up a majestic river against the background of an industrialised metropolis bathed in auroral light: with a collective effort, the creators of the new world are heading for a glorious future.
In the 1920s, Maria Nesterova-Berzina designed numerous commercial posters that reflected the influence of constructivist ideas. Starting with the "Intourist" advertising campaign of the 1930s, she became one of the leaders of the group of artists hired for this project, creating some fifteen posters (the exact number is not established). Her career continued through the Second World War and into the late 1950s. In the post-"Intourist" period, Maria Nesterova-Berzina adopted a style consistent with socialist realism, always remaining faithful to the composition, detail and colour scheme that characterise her artistic vision.
Her posters for "Intourist" in the 1930s are recognised as her highest achievement. Several of them were included in the major exhibition of "Intourist" advertising posters from 1930 to 1970 held in Moscow in 2019.
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