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Das schwarze Kuvert / The Black Cover
An envelope changes hands, and the whole picture is built around what is inside it.
What
A Soviet film poster of 1922 designed jointly by Grigory Borisov and Nikolai Prusakov, one of the defining partnerships of Constructivist film advertising.
Why
Borisov and Prusakov were among the small group of Moscow designers who decided, in the early twenties, that a film poster should be engineered rather than illustrated. Their joint sheets are foundational documents of the style that would define Soviet graphic design for a decade.
Notice
The sheet is horizontal, and the composition works through diagonal thrust and abrupt shifts of scale instead of a settled central figure. This is the Constructivist alternative to a portrait.
“A secret, assembled out of straight lines.”
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 11x17" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
Provenance
- Film
- Das schwarze Kuvert (1922)
- Country / studio
- Soviet Union
- Designer
- Grigory Borisov and Nikolai Prusakov
- Format
- One-sheet (27 × 41 in.)
- Poster published
- Soviet lithographed film poster, 1922
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (poster published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year, never the film’s. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
From The Constructivists
The Double Bill
Two one-sheets, hung as a pair — a double feature for your wall, at a pairing price of $270.00 for the two. Build one from any two one-sheets in the gallery.
Pair it in the gallery →A house of the Provenance family