Bookvica

[ONE OF THE LEADING BOOK DESIGNERS IN THE SOVIET UNION IN THE 1920S] 920-1928. Stikhotvoreniya [i.e. 1920-1928. Poems]

Antokolsky, P.

Item #1292

Moscow; Leningrad: Gos. izd-vo, 1929 (Moskva: tip. «Krasnyy proletariy»). 154, [6] pp. 18x13.6 cm. In original publisher’s cloth binding with illustrated dust-wrappers by Boris Titov. Tears to the dust-wrappers. Otherwise in a very good condition.
Scarce. First edition. 1 of 2,000 copies. Dust-wrappers by Boris Titov (1897-1951), a Soviet graphic artist, book illustrator, and an absolute record holder of the USSR in terms of the number of books designed. After studying for a short time at the Faculty of Medicine of the Imperial Moscow University in the late-1910s, Boris decided to devote himself to painting and entered the 2nd State Art Workshops. From 1922, the artist shifted his focus to book design and already by the mid-1920s managed to achieve recognition as one of the leading Soviet book illustrators. For almost 30 years, the artist mainly designed covers, bindings dust jackets, title pages, headpieces, and occasionally illustrations for books by such authors as A. Adalis, D. Bedny, A. Gaidar, V. Gilyarovsky, N. Gogol, I. Goncharov, V. Hugo, S. Yesenin, etc. In his early work, Titov adhered to the constructivist concept in book design and later developed his own version of the Art Deco style.
This is the fourth collection of poems by the noted Soviet and Russian poet, theatre director, essayist, and translator Pavel Antokolsky (1896-1978). Living in Moscow since 1904, Antokolsky entered the Law Faculty of Moscow University in 1915 but left after two years. Starting in 1915, he acted on stage, and in 1920 he became a co-director of the theatre studio of Evgeny Vakhtangov (see S. An-sky). Initially called the Third Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre, it was renamed the Vakhtangov Theatre in 1926. Antokolsky remained with the Vakhtangov Theatre until 1934. Antokolsky began to publish in 1918. His first collections, Poems (1922) and The West (1926), were built around a 1923 trip to Sweden and Germany with the Vakhtangov troupe and featured Antokolsky’s best poems. During the Great Patriotic War, he directed the front-line theatre and, in the spring of 1945, came to Tomsk as a director of the Tomsk Regional Drama Theatre named after V. Chkalov. Pavel was also a talented translator of French, Bulgarian, Georgian, Azerbaijani poets. Among his translations are Victor Hugo’s story “The Last Day of a Condemned Man» and the romantic drama «The King Amuses Himself.»
The edition includes over 60 poems written by the author in the period from 1920 to 1928. Some of the poems (Balagan [i.e. Chaos], Itog [i.e. The Outcome], Maneken [i.e. Mannequin], etc.) from the book appeared in print for the first time.

Worldcat shows copies of the edition at Harvard University, Columbia University Libraries, and University of Chicago Library.

Price: $750.00