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[KLUTSIS’ DECLARATION ON PHOTOMONTAGE] Izofront: Klassovaia bor’ba na fronte prostranstvennykh iskusstv. Sbornik statei ob’edineniia «Oktiabr” [i.e. Art Front: Class Struggle on the Visual Arts Front. A Collection of Articles of the ‘October’ Association]

Item #663

Moscow: Izogiz, 1931. [2], 162 pp. 17x13 cm. In original cardboards and original dust jacket, both with constructivist design. In a very good condition. Few minor tears of dust jacket, some soiling of covers and minor rusty stains on the inner margins.

First and only edition. One of 5000 copies. Rare.
This is a collection of articles on aesthetics of the industrial art, written by the ‘October’ art group members. Considering the art as a tool of the proletarian mind, they concern the need to use the industrial design to reconstruct the life of the Soviet man.
The spotlight of seven articles is Gustav Klutsis’ work ‘Photomontage as a New Kind of the Agitational Art’. He was not only pioneer of photomontage but the artist who had successfully promoted it as the official art. In the article, he proclaimed the key role of the photomontage technique as the only way to correctly reflect the socialist construction. The article features the works by Klutsis, Sen’kin, Kulagina, Elkin, Lissitzky, Pinus, Heartfield and Tschichold. Besides, he criticized the advertising approach of Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Stenberg brothers in photomontages.
Apart from his essay, six articles by Pavel Novitsky, Vladimir Koval’sky, Elena Eighenhold, Fedor Davydov, Gleb Goroshchenko were published. They advocated for the designs of textile, ceramics, goods and clothes as the platforms promoting proletarian art.
The texts were prepared for the first exhibition of October art group (in 1930) and included group’s documentation, but were published in 1931 when the situation had already changed and the texts were passed to publish for “the creative discussion only”. A lot of 1920s experiments ceased in that year but the photomontage continued its victorious march.

Worldcat shows 9 paper copies in New York Public Library, Amherst College, Harvard University, Yale University, Getty Institute, University of North Carolina, MOMA, National Gallery of Art, Art Institute of Chicago.

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