In 1997, museum staff at the Art Institute of Chicago were clearing out a deep storage closet in the Department of Prints and Drawings ahead of gallery renovations. High on a trough-like shelf, tucked away behind boxes of frame hardware, they found two thick rolls of paper and 26 heavy parcels wrapped in yellowed newsprint. Nobody on staff had any record of what was inside them.
When conservators opened the packages in a controlled environment, they found rock-hard, brittle sheets that looked like dried bark. Unrolling them required weeks of gentle humidification. What emerged was a lost piece of World War II history: 157 monumental Soviet propaganda posters, hand-stenciled in Moscow between 1941 and 1945. They were striking, heroic, and fiercely anti-Nazi, sent directly from the USSR as part of a wartime alliance.
So why were they hidden in a dark closet for over 50 years? The answer lies in the intense political paranoia that swept America right after the war.
Key Takeaways from the Discovery
- 157 posters found: Discovered in 1997 tucked away in an Art Institute storage closet.
- Hand-stenciled art: Created using up to 70 stencils per design with gouache and oil paint.
- Hidden by panic: Stashed away during the 1940s Red Scare to protect the museum from political investigation.
- Preserved by darkness: The lack of light kept the 80-year-old colors completely fresh and un-faded.
What Were the TASS Windows?
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) mobilized a studio of artists, writers, and satirical poets. Their mission was simple: produce massive, high-impact news posters every single day to boost public morale and mock the enemy.
These posters were called "TASS Windows" (Okna TASS). They were designed to be pasted directly into shopfront windows across Moscow, Kuibyshev, and frontline cities. Passersby would stop on the street to read news reports paired with bold graphic satires.
Because offset printing presses were destroyed or rationing paper, the studio turned to an ancient, painstaking method: hand-cut stenciling (pochoir). A single poster could measure up to ten feet tall and require as many as 60 to 70 separate stencils. Teams of stencilers, mostly female art students and veteran painters, worked around the clock in unheated Moscow workshops. They layered bright gouache and heavy oil paints onto cheap newsprint while wearing fingerless gloves through sub-zero winters.
How Did Soviet Propaganda Land in Chicago?
During the height of World War II, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union formed the "Three-Flag Alliance." Cultural exchanges were encouraged to build goodwill between the allied nations.
Between 1942 and 1944, the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) shipped batches of original TASS posters directly to American institutions. The Art Institute of Chicago received 157 of these posters across several shipments. They were intended to be displayed as proof of Soviet resilience and allied unity.
The posters featured contributions from top Soviet graphic artists, including the famous trio Kukryniksy (Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiry Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov), artistic director Nikolai Denisovsky, and satirical poet Demyan Bedny. The imagery was raw, dramatic, and intensely detailed, sharing the raw emotional charge seen in dramatic expressionism art prints.
Why Were the Posters Stashed in the Wall?
By 1947, the global political landscape had shifted completely. The wartime alliance collapsed, giving way to the Cold War. In America, the Red Scare and McCarthyism created an atmosphere of suspicion surrounding anything associated with the Soviet Union.
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) actively investigated cultural institutions, universities, and museums for suspected communist sympathies. Displaying 157 monumental Soviet posters adorned with hammer-and-sickle imagery was no longer seen as celebrating a wartime ally. It could easily trigger a federal investigation or public boycotts.
Museum curators faced a dilemma. They could destroy the collection to play it safe, or keep it. Nervous staff chose a quiet middle ground: they rolled the heavy newsprint sheets, wrapped them in thick brown parcel paper, and stashed them on the highest, most obscure shelf in the print room storage closet. Over the decades, staff retired, gallery walls were repartitioned, and the parcels were completely forgotten.
How Were 50-Year-Old Paper Rolls Restored?
When the parcels were rediscovered in 1997, conservators faced a massive technical challenge. Newsprint is cheap, acidic, and degrades quickly when exposed to air. Decades of standing in a dry, unconditioned closet had left the paper as brittle as dried leaves. Trying to force a roll open would instantly snap the paper into fragments.
The Art Institute's conservation team built a specialized humidity chamber. By introducing controlled water vapor into the air over several days, moisture slowly re-entered the dried paper fibers. Once the paper softened, conservators could carefully unroll each poster inch by inch.
To preserve them for the future, conservators lined the back of every fragile poster with Japanese tissue paper (washi) using wheat starch paste. This provided structural support without altering the original oil and gouache paint layers. Because the closet had kept them in total darkness, the hand-painted colors remained astonishingly bright, unmarred by fading or sunlight exposure, a reminder of how proper framing and backing protect high-quality framed posters for generations.
The 14-year preservation effort culminated in the major 2011 exhibition Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941-1945, bringing these hidden artworks back to public view after nearly seven decades in the dark.
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