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[CAPTURING THE 1954 ALL-UNION AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION] Vsesoyuznaya sel’skokhozyaystvennaya vystavka. Pavil’ony i sooruzheniya [i.e. All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. Pavilions and Facilities]

[Kliks, R.]

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye izdatel’stvo izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva, 1954. Item #1002

152 pp., 2 ill.: ill. 29x22,5 cm. With extremely rare dust-wrapper in Chinese. In original publisher’s cloth binding with gilt lettering and ornaments on the front board and the spine. Dust-wrapper with a couple of tears and small holes. Otherwise fine.

Scarce. Especially with the dust-wrapper. Title-page in Chinese and Russian. Text in Chinese. Captions in Russian. With 166 photographs (3 in color, 163 black-and-white) by Vadim Kovrigin, Mikhail Trakhman, F. Akimov, D. Kozlov, I. Lebedev, A. Teleshov, O. Frenkel’, and Vorob’yev. Design by the Soviet artist Y. Egorov.

PUBLISHED IN 1954, THIS EDITION IS DEDICATED TO THE “SECOND BIRTH” OF THE ALL-UNION AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITION (VSKHV) IN MOSCOW. The site opened on August 1, 1939, and intended to showcase the agricultural accomplishments of the Soviet Union and its constituent peoples and republics. VSKhV was shut down for the remainder of World War II in 1941 and was not re-opened until 1954, when the renovation process was finally over. The exhibition contained pavilions dedicated to 15 Soviet republics (each boasting a traditional architectural design) and different branches of agriculture, including animal husbandry, horticulture, sericulture, mechanization and electrification of agriculture, etc. The restoration work was led by the Soviet architects Anatoliy Zhukov and Rudolph Kliks. The latter commemorated the opening of the exhibition in the present album.

The edition features an abundance of photographs, depicting all pavilions (15 Soviet republics, Bashkir ASSR, Tatar ASSR, Karelia, different oblasts and types of agriculture) and their architectural details (sculptures, facades, domes, fountains, etc.) as well as the facilities presented at the site. All photographs have captions in Russian. The publication contains an introduction and table of contents in Chinese. Intended to showcase the second birth of VSKhV and propagate both agricultural and architectural accomplishments of the Soviet Union, the album came out in different languages, including Russian, English, Chinese, French, and Spanish.

In the following years, the site underwent numerous modifications and had lost much of its original appearance. Against this backdrop, the edition serves as a unique document of the 1954 All-Union Agricultural Exhibition.

No copies in Chinese found in Worldcat.

Price: $550.00