Purse Duce (The TASS Window №733) 1943

This comic strip, "Purse Duce," probably from the 1940s by the Soviet artist collective Kukryniksy, is a powerful piece of propaganda, made with lithographic ink on paper, I imagine. The artists must have known how to cut deep with their satirical caricatures. You can almost feel the urgency and anger in the linework. They start with a pompous, bloated figure, then, panel by panel, he deflates, melts, and dwindles into nothing. I wonder, did the artists feel a sense of triumph or perhaps a darker satisfaction as they worked? The way they used visual metaphor reminds me of Goya's "Disasters of War" series, but with a sharper, more immediate political edge. These artists understood how to wield images as weapons, turning the act of drawing into a form of resistance. It’s a stark reminder that art can be both beautiful and brutal, a reflection of our deepest hopes and darkest fears.