Portrait pictures of actors in Ukrainian cinema posters of 1920s – early 1990s (based on the materials of Ukrainian cinema posters collection from the fonds of V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine)

The author examines cinema posters as a source of visual information. Based on the materials of Ukrainian cinema posters collection of V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, the article analyzes posters, the compositions of which contain portrait pictures of Ukrainian and world cinema actors. It characterizes approaches which were used by the artists during their work of posters creaton in order to present the cinema activity of the actors through the creation of cinema images in graphics or collage technique. The author traces main stylistic peculiarities of the posters with portrait pictures and creative style of certain poster artists. It is worth acknowledging that nowadays unique posters to some films of 1920–1930s which have not been preserved up to the present are of special value as important artistic documents in the history of cinema. Despite the fact that the period of the first third of the twentieth century was an age of silent black-and-white films in the history of cinema, all the posters that accompanied the films release were colored, and together they became a bright and unique page in the history of Ukrainian graphic art and cinema advertising