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[ROSTA WINDOWS] Udarnoe iskusstvo okon satiry [i.e. Striking Art of Satirical Windows]

Zemenkov, B.

Moscow: Khudozhestvennoe izdatel’skoe aktsionernoe obshchestvo AKhR, 1930. Item #911

104 pp.: ill. 18x13 cm. In original constructivist wrappers. Slightly bumped and chipped, signature on half-title, otherwise very good and clean copy.

First and only edition. One of 5000 copies. Cover design by unknown artist features photomontage compositions of ROSTA ‘Windows’ with geometrical figures and lettering.
A book caught a turning point when ROSTA Windows (1918-1922) were re-evaluated by the public. After seven years of silence and almost oblivion, critics started to discuss these agitational posters again, the articles on them appeared in the press and exhibitions were held in state galleries. An author, constructivist artist Boris Zemenkov deeply appreciated their informational content, methods of widespread propaganda and a different approach to each work. The author considered them not posters but rather newspapers. He wrote: “Some of them so relevant that I don’t understand why they are at museums instead of being on streets”.
Zemenkov divided the work into chapters ‘Participation in the Civil War’, ‘At Struggle for Production’, ‘At Struggle for Province’, ‘To a New Way of Life’, overviewing how these common topics were embodied by artists. The book includes reproductions of posters of M. Cheremnykh, V. Mayakovsky, V. Lebedev, I. Malyutin, A. Niurenberg and others.

Worldcat locates copies in Princeton, Yale, Drew Universities and Harvard College.

Price: $850.00