Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

The black-and-white ink drawing, which was often accentuated
with sharp (usually red) colors, became his favourite technique. In
his venomous satires Dmitry Moor conveyed the surrounding social
disintegration and struggle against censorship: mini-comic book
Humorist and Finger (that is Censorship finger), 1911; drawing
the Russian Resorts – treatment by water and iron, – about Lensk
execution, 1912.
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His posters of the revolution and Civil war period turned to be
milestones of the epoch. The modernist style with its flexible and
strong-willed “power lines” reached the peak of propaganda heat,
which was effective in directing public emotions (in fact the satire itself
here became a part of repressive political censorship). Such was, for
example, the image of an emaciated old peasant appealing for help
(see opposite) in the poster Help! Stuck near church entrances, it
was dramatically convincing people about the justice of taking church
finances under the slogan “help those starving in the Volga Region”.
An essential element of Moor’s creativity was antireligious satire as
such (the drawings created while being the art director of the Atheist
at the Machine magazine, 1923-1928; a series of illustrations to G.
Heine’s poem Debate, 1929). He also contributed for the central
Pravda newspaper and (1920), and the popular satirical Crocodile
magazine (from 1922) and other periodicals, as well as created
film posters.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER TEN