Politicians are famous for making extravagant campaign promises. But there are few promises as powerful or as idealistically utopian as those put forth by state-sponsored propaganda. Collected here are colorful images of political ideology created and disseminated by the political regimes of Europe, the Soviet Union, and China from the 1920s through the 70s.

State leaders of the twentieth century were highly conscious of the need to present a unified national image during a time of serious political transition in Europe, and state-sanctioned art performed a key function in an attempt to...