Po prezhnemu zvuchit nash revolyutsionniy nabat [The Bell of Revolution Keeps Ringing], a poster by Alexander Bykhovsky (1888-1978). Published by Saratov Gubpechat’, 1919. 70.4 x 52.5 cm.

A widely-praised poster produced at the crucial junction of the Civil War, at the height of campaign against Denikin. The secondary caption at the bottom reads, approximately, “Against the White Cavalry We Will Unleash Red Cavalry. Hurry to Join the Ranks of Red Cavalry.” Capturing Saratov as an important strategic goal of the Denikin’s initial plan of advance on Moscow, but White armies were stopped far short of their goal.

Alexandr Bykhovsky’s biography is full of unexpected twists and reads like a movie plot — an orthodox Jewish kid becomes an apprentice with an icon painter, gets involved in the revolutionary movement, and after the defeat of the 1905 revolution is forced to run away to Russian Turkestan, later studies art under Rerikh, etc. For the purposes of this catalog, it is sufficient to say that during the Civil War, Bykhovsky became actively involved in posters production, and later worked, at various times, in a great variety of genres, from graphics to producing miniature paintings, to sculpture. He was also a theater and film artist.

Famous Pushkin Museum of Visual Arts in Moscow holds a sizeable collection of Bykhovsky’s graphics. An article about this collection on the museum’s website speaks highly of his early posters, detecting in them the first glimpses of the artist’s distinctive style of 1920s, characterized as “a unique combination of icon painting techniques and Constructivism principles, further influenced by the tradition of Jewish art”.