Our Notes & References

First and only edition. By two women artists who were largely silenced not long after this publication.

Very rare: no copies traced in OCLC or at auction outside Russia. Only three copies traced there (RGB and RNB, and one at auction).

This charming children’s book depicts wild animals dozing under the bright midday sun, each presented through brief couplets and delicate red-and-black illustrations.

The author, Sofia Fedorchenko (1880-1959), began her literary career as a Sister of Mercy near St Petersburg during the First World War, recording soldiers’ conversations, folklore, and perceptions of the war and peace. These materials were published as Narod na Voine [People at War] (1917), an example of very unusual prose that made her “one of the early representatives of the ‘non-fiction novel'” (Gyimesi, our translation) and a successful author, hailed by Sergei Eisenstein, Maksim Gorkii, and Aleksandr Blok. Fedorchenko was later harshly criticised for allegedly falsifying history by creatively reshaping her material rather than following strict ethnographic methods. From 1931 onward she largely ceased writing, and her work attracted renewed attention only after her death.

The illustrations are by the prominent Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde artist Mariia Siniakova (1890-1984), “working in printmaking, watercolor, or collage, she drew inspiration from Ukrainian folk art while embracing Futurist ideals in her practice […] By the age of 11, she and her four sisters had become muses for the poets, artists, and writers of the Ukrainian and Russian avant-garde. Her family home, Krasnaia Poliana, just outside of the city of Kharkov in eastern Ukraine, was a gathering place for the artistic and literary circles of her time” (MoMA). Velimir Khlebnikov, Bozhidar, David Burliuk, and Dmitrii Petrovskii dedicated poems to her (cf. Titar). Active in Ukrainian and Russian groups such as Budyak [Thistle], Tsentrifuga [Centrifuge], and Soiuz Semi [Union of Seven], she exhibited with Soiuz molodezhi [Union of the Youth] and illustrated books by Aleksei Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky among others. Beginning in the 1930s, her commissions declined, and in 1952 she was expelled from the Union of Artists for “kowtowing to Western art”; in the 1960s-70s she collaborated with Ukrainian dissidents.

Bibliography

Not in MoMA; Cushman, Emily, “Maria Siniakova”, MoMA Department of Drawings and Prints, 2024; Gyimesi, Zsuzsanna, “Nachalo dokumentalnoi prozy v Rossii: tvorchestvo S. Z. Fedorchenko” // Izvestiia UrFU. Ser. 2. Gumanitarnye nauki, T. 20, #2 (175), 2018, pp. 169-177; Titar V. P., A. F. Paramonov, L. I. Fefelova, “Znamenitye zmievchane. Sestry Siniakovy – harkovskie muzy futurizma // Istoriia Zmievskogo kraia, Zmiev, 2012.