The Bauhaus had an ambivalent relationship with the poster. Founded by Walter Gropius in Dessau in 1919 with the intention of reconciling fine art and craft production, the school’s core pedagogical commitments — truth to materials, functional form, rejection of ornament — did not map cleanly onto a medium whose entire purpose is affective manipulation. A poster that tells the truth about its own conditions of production is not necessarily a poster that works.

The theatrical one-sheet is 27 by 40 inches. That dimension has been standard since the early twentieth century, sized to fit the display cases outside cinema lobbies. It is one of the most constrained formats in commercial design — fixed proportions, fixed display context, fixed viewing distance — and within those constraints, some of the most inventive image-making of the past hundred years has happened. The current state of the form is less encouraging.