Alexander Maksimov was a Soviet graphic artist, illustrator, painter and poster designer whose early posters addressed political and social themes of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Although he worked as a poster artist for only a short period, his practice later focused primarily on easel graphics and painting.

Born in 1930 in the Moscow region, Maksimov began drawing as a child and graduated from the Moscow Regional Art School in 1950. In 1952 he entered the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute, where he studied under Mikhail Cheremnykh, one of the founders of Windows of TASS and Krokodil. Maksimov graduated in 1958, specialising in poster design.

His early posters addressed subjects including the campaign against nuclear weapons, labour discipline, industrial development and the Soviet economy. Works such as Ban Nuclear Weapons Testing! (1957–58), Shame on Idlers, White-Collar Workers and Parasites! (1958) and Let's Create a Great Chemical Industry! (1959) reflect the political and social concerns of the period. From the 1960s he worked at the Experimental Lithography Workshop on Verkhnyaya Maslovka and increasingly concentrated on easel graphics and painting.

Maksimov exhibited from 1958 and participated in a group exhibition at the State Russian Museum in 1977. Only a small number of his original compositional and colour studies for posters, book illustrations and postcards from the 1950s have survived.

His graphic and painted works are held in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum, while his posters are represented in the Voronezh Regional Museum of Local Lore, the State Museum of the Political History of Russia and the Saratov Regional Museum of Local Lore.

Alexander Denisovich Maximov