The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934

by Jared Ash, Nina Gurianova, Gerald Janecek, Margit Rowell, Deborah Wye, Natalia Goncharova, Kasimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko
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Editorial Reviews

Russian avant-garde books made between 1910 and 1934 reflect a vivid and tumultuous period in that nation's history that had ramifications for art, society, and politics. The early books, with their variously sized pages of coarse paper, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and stamped texts, and provocative covers, were intended to shock academic conventions and bourgeois sensibilities. After the 1917 Revolution, books appeared with optimistic designs and photomontage meant to reach the masses and symbolize a rational, machine-led future. Later books showcased modern Soviet architecture and industry in the service of the government's agenda. Major artists adopted the book format during these two decades. They include Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, the Stenberg brothers, Varvara Stepanova, and others. These artists often collaborated with poets, who created their own transrational language to accompany the imaginative illustrations. Three major artistic movements, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism, that developed during this period in painting and sculpture also found their echo in the book format. This publication accompanied an exhibition of Russian avant-garde books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. All of the books in the exhibition and this publication are part of a gift to the Museum from The Judith Rothschild Foundation.

Customer Reviews

A book for designers, 2007-02-06
by A. J. Mcleod (Auckland, New Zealand)
This book is the best anthology of Constructivist design I have seen.
But if you want good reproductions of Constructivist painting than this book is not for you.
Excellent!!!!!, 2005-12-31
by File9 (planet earth)
This is a hefty volume a large thick 8vo, which is worth every penny spent on it. It's a visual delight, and jam-packed with alot of images, you will not be disappointed.
A Wealth of Illustration, 2003-01-04
by marco santopietro (tokyo, japan)
The book is rich in showcasing and reproducing the Russian Avant-Garde books. In some, it included reproduction of contents of some of the books. For those who miss the exhibition from which this book springs forth, it is a wonderful and well-documented catalog.

The book also contains the exhibition's division of the Soviet book era into three different times, each accompanied by one or several essays. Like any good book, it is also preceded by a general discussion of bookarts, and the difference between livre d'artiste and artist's book.

To the contemporary eyes, some of the books featured may not be anything special, but by putting them in context of the time, one will see the daring nature and the revolutionary spirit of these books and their makers.

The Russian Avant-Garde book, 1910Ð1934, 2002-08-28
by Michael Webb (London, England > Los Angeles, USA)
This companion volume to a major MoMA exhibition is a treasury for graphic designers and bibliophiles, but it also provides a fascinating portrait of artists who began by spitting in the eye of the bourgeosie, became zealous stalwarts of the revolution, and finally reverted to the status of outsiders, as StalinÕs apparatchiks snuffed out every trace of invention. The earliest work has a child-like spontaneityÑcrude sketches on cheap paper illustrating tiny editions of poetsÕ work. ThereÕs a gradual shift to abstraction in the work of such masters as El Lissitsky and Rodchenko, and finally a slide into the banality of socialist realism. A fascinating portrait of artistic struggle and defeat.