В.В. Кандинскій – текст художника [W. W. Kandinsky – Text of the Artist], by Wassily Kandinsky. Moscow: Отдѣла Изобразительных Искусств Народнаго Коммиссаріата по Просвѣщенію, 1918. Russian.

A long composition by Wassily Kandinsky (Васи́лий Васи́льевич Канди́нский; 1866-1944) concerned with his artistic creation, accompanied by reproductions of dozens of his works (one in color, on a separate plate). The work was originally written in Munich in 1913, and printed in the present volume (Moscow, 1918), with a table of contents and bibliography of Kandinsky's entire body of work at the end.

56, [2] pages. Approx. 30 cm. Good condition. Minor stains and creases. Several gatherings slightly loose. Minor wear and stains to binding. Small tears to spine.

MoMA 181.

Professor Hermann Cohen with the young Pasternak in Marburg, signed lithograph by Leonid Pasternak. [Marburg, 1912].

Handwritten dedication in Russian in margin of plate to pianist and composer David Solomonovich Schor (Давид Соломонович Шор; 1867-1942), dated – Berlin, 19.1.27.

Alongside Hermann Cohen, the illustration depicts (on the left) writer Boris Pasternak (son of the artist Leonid Pasternak), who studied under Cohen in the summer of 1912 at the University of Marburg.

38.5 cm. Mounted on cardboard. Good-fair condition. Stains, abrasions and blemishes to margins. Small open tear to edges of cardboard mount.

Leonid Pasternak (Леонид Осипович Пастернак; 1862-1945), a Russian-Jewish Impressionist painter, father of Boris Pasternak. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Odessa, he studied law and medicine before turning to art and training at the Academy of Arts in Munich. He was a friend of Leo Tolstoy, illustrated several of his books, and painted a number of his portraits; in 1905, the was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts and taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1921, he traveled to Berlin for eye surgery and never returned to live in Russia. He passed away in Oxford, England.

Ink on cardboard plates.

The illustrations are signed and titled on their margins; with printing instructions (in pencil) on the margins of the plate.

1. Свинья под дубом [The Pig Under the Oak Tree].

2. Кошка и соловей [The Cat and the Nightingale].

3. Ворона и Лисица [The Fox and the Crow].

4. Лисица и виноград [The Fox and the Grapes].

[4] plates. 32.5 cm. Good condition. Pen inscriptions on verso.

Nathan Altman (Натан Исаевич Альтман; 1889-1970), born in Vinnytsia (present-day Ukraine), an avant-garde artist, painter, graphic designer, sculptor, book illustrator and stage designer. His varied work belongs to various styles – Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, and Suprematism – and reflects the many changes in his world, both artistic and political.

He began his art studies in Odessa; in 1910 he moved to Paris, where he continued his studies and associated with the artists of the "Machmadim" group which advocated Zionist Jugendstil. In 1912, Altman returned to Russia and settled in St. Petersburg. He spent the summer of 1913 sketching reliefs found on Jewish tombstones and developing a Cubist style based on Jewish folk art. At that time, he founded a Jewish Society for the Encouragement of the Arts. Altman was an enthusiastic supporter of the Bolshevik revolution, after which he was appointed a member of the IZO-Narkompros (the Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat for Education). In 1919, he became one of the prominent artists of the "Kom-Fut" group (Communist Futurists). He worked for the Monumental Propaganda plan conceived by Lenin, and created agitprop art.

During the early 1920s, Altman worked as a stage designer for HaBimah Theater and the Jewish State Theater Goset. His Constructivist costume design for the play "The Dybbuk", staged by HaBimah Theater in 1922, incorporated elements taken from Jewish folk and religious art; and his stage design for the Goset production of "Uriel da Costa" was his most advanced Constructivist work at the time. In 1922, his works were exhibited at the "First Russian Art Exhibition" in Berlin and alongside works by Chagall and Sternberg in the "Exhibition of the Three" of the Kultur Lige group. In the early 1920s, Altman was a prominent artist whose works expressed the spirit of the party and the revolution – the rebellion against the old degenerate order – and in this capacity he created a series of sketches and a bust of Lenin. In 1928, Altman went on a tour with the Goset theater and remained in Paris until 1935. While there, the Party's attitude towards art went through a transformation. Already in the mid-1920s the party began furthering socialist realism and restricting the activity of avant-garde groups, claiming art should serve defined goals, be simple and understood by everyone and portray the beauty of communist reality. In 1932, with Altman still out of the country, the central committee of the communist party banned any union of independent artists. From then on, the party imposed its new and preferred style, socialist realism, and avant-garde was pushed to the new status of "bourgeois" art, enemy of the revolution. Returning to Russia in 1936, Altman settled in Leningrad, and as an undesirable artist worked mainly as a graphic designer, book illustrator and stage designer, trying to adhere to the party's new line.

Literature: Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change 1890-1990, edited by Susan Tomarkin Goodman. Prestel Publishing, Munich / New York, 1995. p. 146.

Collection of sixteen original drawings and illustrations by Mendel Gorshman. Includes illustrations for works by Sholem Aleichem – "Tevye the Dairyman" and "Motl Peyse dem Khazns" – I.L. Peretz, and others. [Russia, ca. 1940s-70s].

Ink on paper.

Verso of most illustrations bear handwritten notes (in Russian) with names of stories and works for which the illustrations were created, dates, printing instructions, and additional information. Verso of two plates bear sketches of additional illustrations. All illustrations tipped in to paper boards.

[16] plates. Size and condition vary. Overall good condition.

Mendel Gorshman (Мендель Хаимович Горшман; 1902-1972), Soviet-Jewish graphic artist, illustrator and painter, born to a traditional Jewish family in Borisov, Minsk region, Belarus. Studied at Yakob Kruger's art school in Minsk, later at Nikolai Kupreyanov's art workshop in Kostroma and in the graphics department of Vkhutemas in Moscow.

Member of several Soviet art groups, including OST (OCT) and "Four Arts" (Четыре искусства). Worked for several important publishing houses in Russia, illustrating works by major Jewish writers and poets including Isaac Babel, Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Peretz Markish and others. His illustrations also accompanied several classic works of Russian literature. His works were exhibited over the years in several important exhibitions in the Soviet Union and abroad and are now preserved in important collections and museums in Russia, including the Pushkin Museum and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.