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[LEBEDEV ART SCHOOL] Gde raki zimuiut [i.e. Where Crayfish Spend Winter]

Bianki, V.

Item #2598

Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo detskoi literatury, 1935. 16 pp.: ill. 22 × 17,5 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine rubbed, with small tears, fragments of back cover edges lost, light soiling of covers, otherwise very good and clean pages.

Second edition. A good example of the Lebedev-school children’s books. The Russian expression “gde raki zimuiut” [literally “where crayfish spend winter”] was commonly used as threatening to make it hot to somebody. However, this children’s book actually tells a story about a crayfish who escapes from being boiled in a pot and successfully gets away from that house; in some months it reaches a river with other crustaceans and prepares to hibernate.
Cover design and illustrations were created by artist and poster designer Valentin Kurdov (1905–1989). He studied at the Ekaterinburg Art School, the Perm Art College, the Perm Higher Art and Industrial Workshops and in the jewelry department of the Ekaterinburg Art and Industrial School. In 1923, he enrolled at the Petrograd VKhUTEIN. Among his professors were K. Petrov-Vodkin, M. V. Matyushin and A. I. Savinov. At the same time, Kurdov befriended writer V. Bianki and attended P. Filonov’s studio. Graduated from VKhUTEIN in 1926, Kurdov entered the Leningrad Institute of Art Culture (GINKhUK) to study under K. Malevich. For a year, he worked in its Department of Painting Culture, deeply exploring textures and systematically developing his own Cubist approach. Malevich valued Kurdov’s technique and color sensitivity. For that year, Kurdov created more than 10 large artworks but ceased Cubism after being drafted to the Red Army. From 1927, Kurdov began working for Detgiz under V. Lebedev and joined the core group of illustrators known as the Lebedev School, alongside Iu. Vasnetsov, A. Pakhomov, and E. Charushin. In the 1930s, he illustrated works by Bianki, Vvedensky, Kipling, Walter Scott, and others. After WWII, he continued creating illustrations for Bianki, Sokolov-Mikitov, Sladkov, Kipling. This design includes 7 black and white illustrations. Some of them look like high-contrast photographs, some images are fully colored as silhouettes. Throughout the story the crayfish remained alive and black, but the cover design features two crayfish: black and red. The story was written by well-known Soviet children’s author Vitalii Bianki (1894–1959). Following his father, he became a birdwatcher and biologist. During the Russian Civil War, Bianki supported the socialist revolutionary party. He stayed in Russia after Bolsheviks seized power, and he was arrested several times in the 1920s–1930s for being born into a noble family or for forged charges. Bianki debuted with children’s stories in 1923 and since then has written children’s books about nature and animals. In all, he has written more than three hundred short stories, fairy tales, novellas, and articles.

Worldcat doesn’t track this edition.

Price: $450.00

Status: On Hold