As the dust of WWII settled, Germany was split in two. A wall separated the western side from the Soviet sponsored east, the German Democratic Republic. A satellite state of the USSR, East Germany forbade its citizens to travel abroad. It also exerted an iron fist when it came to art.
Film posters escaped the censors’ eye. They were considered a minor discipline, no more than decoration. East German artists like Otto Kummert and Erhard Grüttner created surprisingly dreamlike film posters which increasingly became more abstract, until a single sign or symbol could represent an entire movie.
