Occasionally an exhibition both startling and compelling lands in one of London’s off-centre galleries. This one brings together 150 photomontages never previously seen, representing the historic explosion of photographic design around the rise of fascism in
Europe.

Not surprisingly, German and Russian artists dominate but there are also generous examples from Italy, Holland, France, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Probably best-known are the prototype anti-fascist posters by Berlin’s John Heartfield, built around powerful, single photographic images, and cartoonish satires such as The Meaning of the Hitler Salute.

This ancestor of today’s digital design, photographic and cinematic effects was a painstaking, hands-on artform involving scalpels, paste, paper and paint. Strongly influenced by Cubist, Dada and Futurist collages made with newspaper cuttings over-painted with surrealist flourishes, these are built into dense, potent scenes with photographic fragments of houses, factories, streets, people, machines, and topped slogans written in equally inventive typefaces.

The Russian room is a breathtaking assault of shouted red messages, angular Constructivist shapes and stark photographic portraits, epitomised by Rodchenko.

El Lissitsky’s brilliant scenarios closely resemble surrealist film stills and are the most photographically sophisticated, but Gustav Klucis’s gorgeous 1928 Olympiad posters, which expand the palette to radiant yellows and greens, concentrate on the design element.

In peacetime, the technique was applied to subtler advertisements, including the stylish, minimalist Dutch designs by Paul Schuitema for powdered milk and telegrams. The Italian examples are exquisitely painterly and defined by Bruno Munari’s The Poetic Joy of Flight.

The collection also reveals the versatility of photomontage in Laszlo Maholy-Nagy’s set designs for the musical, The Merchant of Berlin, Walter Ruttmann’s vast Man Ray-like storyboards for Berlin — Symphony of a City — and the incongruously stylish anti-fascist montages by the prolific German photographer (and future American Vogue favourite) Erwin Blumenfeld.

An enthralling exhibition, this is a rare chance to explore this influential period of photographic history which its curator Lutz Becker believes can’t be repeated — the images are too fragile to be moved on.

Until 21 December (020 7704 9522, www.estorickcollection.com).