Our Notes & References

One of only 6 copies on china paper, with the additional print signed by Alexeieff, who illustrates here the enigmatic masterpiece of Medieval Russian literature with superb colour aquatints.

The Russian born Alexeieff (1901-82) was an important artist and animator, who worked mostly in Paris. Known for pioneering the innovative pinscreen animation technique which resulted in strikingly atmospheric films such as ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ – but also celebrated for some great livres d’artiste, where he made regular use of the aquatint process to create prints of an unusual and often unsettling tone and texture.

The illustrations to this French version of Slovo o Polku Igoreve are especially remarkable for their beautiful colours, which Alexeieff didn’t use often – for example his large-format masterpiece, Dostoevsky’s Les Frères Karamazovs, is in black-and-white. The artist combined here an à la poupée colouring technique and the use of at least three separate plates, a complex process which the décompsition suite included in this copy clearly shows.

This bilingual edition is also the first appearance of this noteworthy translation by Philippe Soupault, who also contributed the preface, of one of the most important early texts of Russian literature. Although some scholarly doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the text, not least due to it being known from only a single manuscript copy which was destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1812, current academic consensus dates the Song of Igor’s Campaign to the late 12th century; the tale bears comparison to other medieval national epics such as The Song of Roland and the Tale of the Nibelungs, and features a particular emphasis on the experience and impact of the natural world on the protagonists.