International Red Aid

By 1924 Heinrich Vogeler had undergone a complete transformation from decorative Symbolist to committed communist. After spending time in Soviet Russia in the early 1920s, he embraced the Bolshevik project with an idealism that mirrored his earlier Arts-and-Crafts utopianism. 'International Red Aid' — the name of an organisation that provided legal and material support to imprisoned communist activists worldwide — was an explicit piece of political art, a form Vogeler had adopted wholesale after the war. The canvas is now held in Moscow at the State Central Museum of Contemporary Russian History, a fitting location given Vogeler's deep involvement with Soviet cultural life. This work represents the most radical phase of his career, when he abandoned the fairy-tale imagery that had made him famous in favour of agitprop-inflected imagery celebrating international solidarity and workers' struggle.

The political works of Vogeler's Soviet period show a significant departure from his earlier refined surface approach. Forms are simplified and bold, colour more direct and assertive. The compositional logic is rhetorical rather than aesthetic — elements are arranged to communicate a message with maximum legibility rather than to produce visual pleasure.