Iosif Ivanovich Gromitskii was born in a part of the Russian Empire that is today the country of Belarus. For the majority of his adult life, he lived and worked in Moscow. From 1923 to 1930, Gromitskii studied at VKhUTEIN (Higher Art and Technical Institute) under the tutelage of Dimitri Moor, a prolific poster artist. For his diploma work, he created illustrations for Victor Hugo's book, Gavroche. Around 1930, the artist began working as a poster designer, and ...

1st Exemplary Ogiz RSFSR Typography Workshop of the Poligrafkniga Trust was located in Moscow at 28 Valovaia Street. Historically, the workshop began as the Sharapov-Sytin Partnerhip in the era prior to the Russian Revolution. Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin (1851-1934) was the son of a peasant. He opened a small print shop in Moscow using a single press and by the start of the 20th century his printing business (at Valovaia and Piatnitskaia streets) was the largest private ...

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 ...