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[FAIK TAGIROV] Baski. Byki. Araby: Kniga ob Ispanii i Marokko [i.e. Basques. Bulls. Arabs: A Book about Spain and Morocco]

Edschmid, K.

Moscow: Gos. izd-vo, 1929. Item #1421

234, [4] pp. 22x14 cm. In original constructivist cardboards. Restored, slightly rubbed, otherwise very good and clean.

First and only Russian edition of ‘Basken, Stiere, Araber - Ein Buch über Spanien und Marokko’ by one of the leaders of German expressionism, Kasimir Edschmid (1890-1966). Foreword was written by literary historian Ivan Anisimov.
One of 4000 copies. Very rare.
Outstanding design was produced by Faik Tagirov (1906-1978), a student at VKHUTEMAS at that time. Tagirov was born into a family of Tatar artists; after his father’s death, he moved to Ekaterinburg where contributed to an art studio of a local Proletkult branch. Returning to Kazan, he studied in the Kazan Institute of Architecture and Art in 1923-1925. In this period, he designed store signs, interior for clubs, decorated streets for revolutionary holidays, designed books and mastered Tatar type design using Arabic script.
Tagirov was familiar with the experience of contemporary constructivist artists. Influenced by them, he at the same time focused on national culture. He became an active member of the TatLEF or SULF (1923-1926) along with K. Chebotarev and A. Platunova. Lacking its own periodical, TatLEF had made its tribune of wall newspapers and Tagirov designed the Tatar-language posters ‘Sulf’. In his work, Tagirov synthesized the ancient traditions of Islamic art with the techniques of the European avant-garde, combining Arabic graphics with constructivist aesthetics and actively using photomontage.
In 1925, Tagirov enrolled at the Printing Department of VKHUTEMAS and started to design books in the Tatar language for the Central Publishing House of the Peoples of the USSR. He created some books together with Alexandra Korobkova (1905–1998), his colleague and wife. Further creative and scientific activity of Tagirov was associated with the type design. He stayed in Moscow where he was able to fully implement LEF’s slogan “Art for Production”. From 1930 to 1934, Tagirov was a postgraduate student at the Moscow Printing Institute where he taught the course of the theory and practice of type design.
The edition ‘Basques. Bulls. Arabs’ had special resonance among the Soviet innovators of book design, as well as their opponents. Tagirov designed the whole layout turning it into an art object. This fictional text underwent abundant and very arbitrary accentuation. Using a single typeface, the designer varied fonts inside one sentence (or even one word), made some words bold, added rulers, arranged all components however he wanted: diagonally, in a column, sliding out of the rest text, etc.
In all, it is a remarkable example of constructivist book design proving that an artist of the 1920s had no limits in layout experiments.

The only copy is located in the Getty Institute.

Price: $1,500.00