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[SEN’KIN] Rasskazy o smerti Lenina [i.e. Stories about Lenin’s Death]

Grinberg, A.

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1930. Item #1451

16 pp.: ill. 16,5x12,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine restored, pre-war stamps of school library, otherwise very good and clean. Second edition.

The classic example of the photobook created by one of the pioneers of the Soviet photomontage, Malevich’s student and Klutsis’ right hand, Sergei Sen’kin (1894- 1963). Sen’kin has been an important link between suprematism and constructivism: he worked with Malevich and Lissitzky in Vitebsk and was a member of UNOVIS in 1921, but then he became one of the active members of the Left Front of Arts in Moscow, collaborating with Rodchenko, Mayakovsky and Stepanova. All of this time he worked with Gustav Klutsis, creating posters and book designs together. Although traditionally the early development of photomontage in the USSR is attributed to Klutsis, Sen’kin’s role shouldn’t be underestimated. After 1921 he fully dedicated himself to industrial and applied design, creating also posters, stamps and designing the Soviet pavilion at the Cologne exhibition of 1928 together with El Lissitzky.
In 1930, the duo of Anna Grinberg and Sergei Sen’kin published two children’s photobooks about Lenin: ‘The Attempt to Assassinate Lenin’ and ‘Stories about Lenin’s Death’, close in their design and format.
The front cover of this book shows the death mask of Lenin, made by the sculptor S. Merkulov. According to book historian M. Karasik, it resembles an ice sculpture and thus it might have suited better to another memorial book, D. Urin’s ‘Ice Head’. Oppressive black background is complemented with a red line, leading us from Lenin’s head to the mausoleum that was shot from an infrequent angle - from the left side, together with the crowd gathered around.
The book contains two full-page photomontages. They were made by adhesion of pictures. The photographer D. Debabov was credited nowhere but in Karasik’s ‘The Impact Book of the Soviet Youngsters’ (p. 26).

Not found in Worldcat.

Price: $1,250.00