Although known for his characterizations and posters that he signed with the pseudonym 'Deni'; Viktor Nikolayevich Denisov never received formal artistic education. Around 1906, Deni began exhibiting at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Independents in Saint Petersburg, as well as at the Salon of Humorists. In 1910, he took private lessons in painting and drawing from the artist-portraitist Nikolai P. Ulianov and that same year, he became active in the field of political caricature, contributing ...

Ogiz was the Association of the State Book and Magazine Publishers. Its main offices were located in Moscow and in Leningrad. The Sovnarkom of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic established Ogiz in 1930 to centralize publishing activities under a state monopoly in order to eliminate duplication of printed material, streamline and control publishing production and output, and to create a base for marketing books, training and technical manuals. In 1931, the Central Committee of the USSR ...