Bookvica

[feat. MALEVICH, ROZANOVA, GONCHAROVA, ALTMAN] Vzorval

Kruchenykh, A.

Item #2446

2nd supplemented edition. St. Petersburg: Publ. "EUY", Lit. "Svet", 1913. [58 p.] 18,6x12,8 cm. 1 of 450 copies. Original lithographed wrappers, carefully restored. Bookshop stamp on the back of the rear wrapper. Otherwise very good. Seven sheets were printed by Kruchenykh using hand-typesetting stamps, the rest were made using lithography.

The milestone of zaum poetry, one of the peaks of Russian avant-garde book production, this book has united under one cover a great array of artists. The second, expanded edition of Vzorval, prepared in the summer of 1913. Poems by A. Kruchenykh, illustrations by N. Kulbin, O. Rozanova, N. Goncharova, K. Malevich, N. Altman. In the new edition, some poems have been removed, some have been added. Several poems, typeset in the first edition with hand stamps, were replaced by lithographed versions executed by O. Rozanova, who also designed the new cover of the book.
The first edition of "Vzorval" was prepared in the spring of 1913. The second, slightly modified edition of the book – in the summer of the same year. In the second edition, O. Rozanova also has commissioned a new design for the cover - with an image of the city.
This book features two compositions by Kazimir Malevich - his two early works in book design. One is ‘Smert' cheloveka odno vremenno na aeroplane i zhel. doroge’ (Death of a man simultaneously in an airplane and on the railroad) is the title handwritten by the artist in cursive on the lower right corner of the image and the other one and the other one is called ‘Prayer’.
Unlike Rozanova and the other artists involved, Malevich engages in zaum world-play himself, spelling the title of his first composition in a weird way, using unnecessary abbreviation.

“My ideal in 1912-1913 was a frantic pace and rhythm, and therefore poetry and prose were built entirely on syntactic and other shifts, examples are given in my books “Vozropschem,” “Vzorval,” and others. I think that someday they will return to this — that’s where our futurism and such a sharp emphasis on expression come from... It is very important that in the books “Vzorval,” “Mirskonts” there was a thrill, an explosion, which was revealed not only in the construction of phrases and lines, but also in the exploded font...” — this was how Kruchenykh has explained one of the most puzzling Russian books of 1910s.

Our copy comes from the library of Italian collector Alberto Sandretti (his ex-libris on the first flyleaf). The copy also inscribed to him from a Moscow acquaintance in 1961 ‘Pierro from Yulia’.

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