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[feat. KIRILL ZDANEVICH] Turnir poetov [i.e. Tournament of Poets]

Item #2448

Moscow: Izd. “Gruppy lefovtsev”, 1929. 18 leaves (rectos only). 17,5x21,5 cm. Original front cover preserved. Supplied back cover. Small tears and minor blank fragments on edges of front cover and l. 18 restored, pale water stain on lower inner corner, some stains through front cover and first two leaves, some soiling of corners. Soviet bookstore stamp on the last page. Otherwise very good.

Second edition. Limited glass-lithographic edition. Copy #67 of 150.

In all, five editions of three “Tournament of Poets” were released in 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1934. The first one was published with constructivist cover design by I. Kliun. As a publisher, the Leningrad Theater of the House of Printing was defined. The 1929 edition was the first to show the illustrated cover design by Kirill Zdanevich – it was later reprinted for the 1930 edition.

The collection “Tournament of Poets” comprises humorous and improvisational verses that rhyme the name of Kruchenykh. He gathered writings by Nikolai Aseev, Vera Inber, Valentin Kataev, Velimir Khlebnikov, Semen Kirsanov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, Nina Sakonskaia, Ilya Sel’vinskii, Sergei Tret’iakov and Tatiana Vechorka, complementing them with his own poetry. Apart from the poems, the collection includes an illustration by Ivan Kliun on leave 12 and a portrait of Kruchenykh by Igor Terent’ev on leave 6. The works were handwritten by different poets and then glass-printed with black ink. For
the cover design, the title page and a portrait, red ink was used.

In the late 1920s – early 1930s, Alexei Kruchenykh differed from those avant-garde figures who were inextricably linked with state-commissioned projects. Kruchenykh maintained his commitment to creative freedom. For unofficial books, he came back to non-mechanical printing processes like lithography and vitreography. In 1928, he initiated a series of twenty-four brochures of ‘The Unpublished Khlebnikov: 1916-1921’ (1928-1933) that were printed on glass. After Mayakovsky’s death in 1930, three issues of ‘The Living Mayakovsky’ were also created in the same technique.

In all, an early imprint of a rare edition preserving handwritten styles of Soviet poets.

Worldcat shows copies located in Princeton, Yale, Stanford, California, Northwestern, John Hopkins Universities, Getty Institute, Amherst College.

Price: $2,500.00