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.