“KIYOSHI AWAZU – 詩人トロツキー / GEKIDAN NINGENZA No.26 / NIHON SEINENKAN HALL,” Japanese Theatre Poster, Original Offset 1968 Design / 1969 Performance Issue, Rare, B2 Size (c. 51.7 × 73.3 cm) S218
An original period theatre poster by Kiyoshi Awazu (1929–2009) for Gekidan Ningenza’s (劇団人間座) No.26 production of Shijin Trotsky (詩人トロツキー / “Poet Trotsky”). A Chiba City Museum of Art exhibition checklist documents Awazu’s Gekidan Ningenza “Shijin Trotsky” Poster as a 1968 printed work measuring 73.3 × 51.7 cm, while this specific surviving issue carries the updated performance dates 20–25 March 1969 at Nihon Seinenkan Hall (日本青年館ホール). The poster therefore represents an original 1969 performance issue of Awazu’s 1968 design, rather than a modern reprint.
The sheet identifies Isamu Kurita (栗田勇) as playwright and Kazuo Eda (江田和雄) as director. Contemporary bibliographic material likewise credits the production’s 宣伝美術 / publicity art to Kiyoshi Awazu, alongside composition / directing assistance by Taizō Hamada and music by Makoto Moroi. The performance information printed prominently across the poster gives the run as 20–25 March 1969, with evening performances at 6:30 pm and a Sunday matinee, at the historic Nihon Seinenkan Hall in the Meiji Jingu Gaien area of Tokyo.
Awazu was self-taught and became one of the major figures of post-war Japanese graphic design. Kariya City Art Museum records his early career in film and theatre publicity and notes the extraordinary breadth of his later practice, while major institutional collections including LACMA preserve his theatre posters from precisely this late-1960s period. His stage graphics are particularly important because they fuse political imagery, vernacular typography, photography, printmaking and traditional Japanese visual structures into work that often transcends its original advertising function.
This example is especially striking for its monumental halftone portrait of Leon Trotsky, rendered in burnt orange and deep brown and overlaid with acid yellow-green photographic eye details, proportional diagrams and silhouetted human figures. Awazu surrounds the face with saturated fragments of revolutionary crowds, architecture, political imagery and geometric measurement systems, creating a visual language that feels simultaneously documentary, constructivist and psychedelic. Across the bottom, enormous blue and black Cyrillic-inspired “TROTSKY” lettering crashes through the composition, while a small multicoloured circular graphic at lower left adds another burst of Pop-era colour. It is a superb example of Awazu’s ability to transform a specific theatrical commission into a stand-alone work of radical 1960s Japanese graphic design.
Condition: Excellent original condition overall, with remarkably strong colour, rich orange, magenta, blue and yellow-green printing. There is light age / handling wear, minor creasing and some small edge / lower-margin wear visible in the close-up photographs, entirely consistent with an original working theatre poster from 1969. The principal portrait, typography and graphic elements remain extremely strong, and the poster presents beautifully overall. Please review the imagery provided as this is the exact poster for sale.
