Budapest Poster Gallery

2. Auktion | Plakate und Plakatentwürfen

84 x 55 cm. Fine, restored.

The poster of Gönczi is a recognized piece and the fame is well-earned: it is an important historical relic and a strong artwork. It promotes a huge public event, which took place on the 12th of June, in 1948. This was the occasion where it was declared that the Social Democratic party will merge into the Communist party for good, thus Hungary took a step towards being a single-party state. The organization of the new system became complete with the inception of the People’s Front and with the changing of the voting system.
Reports of the Congress tell about the event with an excited tone: “The Congress of the merging of the Hungarian Communist Party and Social Democratic Party states that the elimination of the gap which was being apparent in the Hungarian working class for three decades, and the foundation of the organized political unity of the working class is the glorious victory of the people’s democracy and the huge defeat of the reactive forces. The merging of the two workers’ parties had been prepared by the more years long tenacious fight by the Communist Party for the revolutionary unity of the Hungarian workers’ class....’.
The poster follows the typical iconography of the socio-realistic style: male and female figures moving forward – the inspiration for this was the work of Vera Mukhina from the 1930s ‘Worker and the Collective Farm Girl’. The two figures represent two genders, two social classes (worker and farmer), but they are heading towards the same direction, which symbolizes the merging of the two parties and their way together in the future.
(Anikó Katona)