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[RUSLAN AND LYUDMILA ILLUSTRATED BY KUSTODIEV] Ruslan and Lyudmila

Pushkin, A.

Petersburg: Gosizdat, 1921. Item #1010

120 pp.: ill. 19,5x15 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Tears with small losses of spine, tears and small losses of blank margin of p. 115-117, stains occasionally.

Cover design and 25 illustrations, head-, tail-pieces and a small portrait of Pushkin were produced by well-known artist Boris Kustodiev (1878-1927). After the 1917 Revolution, he turned to book graphics and, in particular, worked on Pushkin’s works.

His approach to illustrating Pushkin’s tales was completely different from Bilibin’s style, enormously popular in the pre-revolutionary period. The purpose of a series ‘Narodnaia biblioteka’ (the People’s Library) was to give the country an extremely cheap and mass book (the print run was 20 000 copies). With this aim, Kustodiev created black and white illustrations, refused to draw full-page illustrations and focused on producing head- and tailpieces, mixing them with vignettes.

Worldcat doesn’t track this edition.

Price: $350.00