Our Notes & References

Lovely production of the Russian avant-garde, with cover and more than 50 illustrations designed by Natalia Goncharova.

First edition, limited to only 325 copies – this one uncut and in wonderfully fresh condition. This is one of 300 copies on Arches, this copy being un-numbered.

Reproduced entirely by lithography, the book combines Rubakin’s poems, written in an elaborately stylized script, and Goncharova’s full-page lithographs and vignettes of various sizes and complexity. The poems reflect Rubakin’s emotional turmoil after the death of his wife in 1918, as well as his intense experience of urban life, strikingly interpreted by Goncharova.

Her drawings “complement the text providing insights into the scope of her work up to 1920, ranging from Neo-Primitivism to Futurism to theatrical lyricism” (Ryan p. 62). Each pair of facing printed pages is followed by two empty pages, creating a rhythmic experience that accentuates her contrast-heavy drawings. The choice of avoiding letterpress printing and other forms of mechanical reproduction in favour of lithography reflects the Futurist attempt to convey a more immediate and spontaneous type of artistic expression.

Together with her companion, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) left Russia in 1915 and permanently settled in Paris in 1917. After training and exhibiting widely in Western Europe, she had developed a highly original style that incorporated Russian iconography, folk culture (lubki), as well as cubofuturism and abstract “rayonism,” a tendency she pursued together with Larionov. Building on her successful career as a Russian avant-garde painter, she was primarily active as a stage and costume designer for the Ballets Russes, both in Paris and internationally.

Rubakin (1889-1979), poet and journalist, was arrested in 1906 for distribution of revolutionary literature. A year later he emigrated from Russia and settled in France in 1908. He regularly submitted articles to such magazines as ‘New Magazine for Everyone’, ‘Russian Treasure’, ‘Russian Thought’ etc. In 1944 Rubakin returned back to the USSR.

Bibliography

Hellyer 457; MoMA 292; Ryan, Letter Perfect: The Art of Modernist Typography.