...Maria Gough Drawing on archival and recently published documents, this essay examines the historical encounter of two major communist photomonteurs in Moscow in 1931—John Heartfield, visiting from Weimar Germany under the auspices of the Comintern, and Gustavs Klucis, a Latvian resident of the city...

... Klucis with Heartfi eld, moves beyond the false polarity of constructivism and realism, which Klucis upheld in his critique of Heartfi eld, a critique marred by Klucis’s originality claims regarding the invention of photomontage. Gough lays out a complex Soviet controversy on photomontage...

... Experiments in the Bauhaus Photomontages of László Moholy-Nagy and Marianne Brandt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Elizabeth Otto Back in the USSR: John Heartfi eld, Gustavs Klucis, and the Medium of Soviet Propaganda...

... Apprenticeship, 1931–1932.” In John Heartfield , edited by Pachnicke Peter Honnef Klaus , 256 – 89 . New York : Abrams . Gough Maria . 2009 . “Back in the USSR: John Heartfield, Gustavs Klucis, and the Medium of Soviet Propaganda.” New German Critique , no. 2 : 133 – 83...

... critique. It was precisely Heartfi eld’s pictorial (some have even argued “painterly”) organicism that prompted criticism from his Soviet peers—Gustavs Klucis most vocally—who asserted that Heart- fi eld’s emphasis on illusionistic space and visual narrative allied itself with traditional...