Our Notes & References

From the earliest Soviet association of children’s book artists. First and only edition, rare in original watercolouring — one of just 125 numbered hand-coloured examples, this being no. 69.

Rare, as we could confirm only two coloured examples in US holdings (MoMA and Johns Hopkins); the catalogue entries for copies at Getty and NYPL have no mention of colouring or numbering. We traced only two coloured copies at Russian auctions and four in the West (including two sold in the 1980s and one of doubtful colouring and without a serial number).

The productions of the artel, or collective of artists, Segodnia [Today] (active 1918–19), are regarded as “a continuation of futuristic trends in Russian book design” and also as “one of the first experiments in the development of Soviet children’s books” (quoted in Karpov, our translation here and below). Segodnia was founded by the artist Vera Ermolaeva with the aim of “filling a gap in children’s literature, which is extremely important but almost non-existent” (Karpov). At a time when the nascent Soviet printing industry was in crisis, with shortages of paper and technology, the artists of Segodnia resorted to semi-manual production using traditional techniques of engraving and lithography. The illustrations were cut on linoleum and printed from the original blocks, without the aid of zincography. Such a small-format series of books, just eight pages including wrappers, were printed in 1,000 copies on a manual press, 125 of which were hand-coloured and numbered. Coloured examples carried an indication of this tirage de tête on the verso of the title and omitted the printed price on the lower wrapper; they were apparently sold at almost six times the price (Karpov).

This attractive example of Khvoi by Natan Vengrov (1894–1962), a prominent children’s poet and literary critic, preserves its fresh and vivid colouring on all illustrations by the artist Ekaterina Turova. Turova was an associate of Ermolaeva and artist Mikhail Le-Dantiu in the Futurist group “Beskrovnoe ubiistvo” [“Bloodless Murder”], an anarchic and absurdist collective active in 1914-18 that anticipated the later work of OBERIU group of Russian Futurists.

Vengrov’s verse here is still printed in “pre-revolutionary” orthography and makes reference to God. The lower wrapper bears Segodnia’s cubo-futurist publishing mark, designed by Ermolaeva.

Provenance

Private NYC collection.

Bibliography

MoMA 199; Rozanov 2430; Tarasenkov, p. 82; Karpov, Dmitrii. “Artel khudozhnikov ‘Segodnia'” // Antikvariat. Predmety iskusstva i kollektsionirovaniia. Dec. 2003.