Ron Miriello Collection | AIGA San Diego In 1989, the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts put on an exhibition of 75 Soviet posters at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego-La Jolla), under the title Poster Art of the Soviet Union: A Window into Soviet Life. Ron Miriello, a founding board member of AIGA and the curator of the exhibition, acquired the Soviet poster collection in 2014. The show offered American audiences a chance to view outstanding graphics illustrating the radical social and political changes that were taking place under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev.
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In the early years of the Soviet Union, the family was considered an anachronistic bourgeois institution, and kommunalki, or communal apartments, were built in a way that did not allow for family privacy. Later on, Soviet governments acknowledged the need for privacy and started to build family apartments. The text on top of the poster reads: “Family! Let there be happiness in it, and let work, the raising of children, love, and peace in your home contribute to it!”
Lilia Levshunova, Family, n.d.
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A crocodile with human legs in shiny shoes, its body composed of apartment buildings and a factory spewing multicolored pollution, is about to devour a small, peaceful village. The text on the top right reads: “Comrades! Let us urgently save everything that we breathe and live by.” The poster expresses the ecological concerns among the Soviet population in the late 1980s. Igor Maystrovsky, Comrades, 1989
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