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[KSENIIA BOGUSLAVSKAIA & IVAN PUNI] Geroi i zhertvy Revoliutsii. Octiabr’ 1917–1918 [i.e. Heroes and Victims of the Revolution. October 1917–1918]

Mayakovsky, V.

Item #2712

Petrograd: Otdel izobrazitel’nykh iskusstv Komiteta Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, 1918. [1] p., [18] plates. 35x25,3 cm. Original paper folder. Spine is strengthened with tissue paper. Otherwise in very good condition.

First and only edition. Rare. One of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s early propaganda projects glorifying the Bolshevik Revolution.

The edition was commissioned by the Art Department of the Committee of the People’s Commissariat for Education. Mayakovsky’s avant-garde verses accompany drawings by Kseniia Boguslavskaia, Vladimir Kozlinsky, Sergei Makletsov and Ivan Puni featuring different types of Russian residents in 1917. The authors categorized them into two camps: those who embraced the revolution and those who stood against it. Their images are preceded by a list, evoking the tradition of theater playbills and character lists. The first group includes a worker, Red Army soldier, peasant, sailor, seamstress, laundry maid, driver of an armored car, telegraph operator, and railway worker. The Revolution and the newly formed workers’ state considered these characters their base of support. The captions for them are not satirical but supportive. Mayakovsky captioned one of the unambiguous heroes: “Washerwoman! Go rinse out the bourgeois. To make him whiter, give him a wash in the Neva river!” Then drawings show those who were supposed to be left in the past after the Revolution: a factory owner, banker, landowner, kulak, noble lady, priest, bureaucrat, White general, and merchant. In their case, Mayakovsky composed satirical ditty-style verses about their unlucky destiny. Thus he wrote: “Scarlet banners waved on high / across our Mother-Russian land. / But those who caught the fiercest eye / were Mother Church and priest-in-hand.”
Later Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote that this series of drawings with ditty-style verses turned into a standard for many revolutionary posters and in particular the ROSTA Windows of Satire. Of the artists attracted to this project, Vladimir Kozlinsky and Sergei Makletsov mostly collaborated with satirical magazines. Kozlinsky was one of the most prolific caricature masters. He collaborated with the magazines ‘Novy Satiricon’ [New Satyricon], ‘Prodzhektor’ [Spotlight], Buzoter [Troublemaker], Chudak [Freak], Ogonek [Little Fire], etc. He also influenced the creation of the Petrograd ROSTA Windows.
Kseniia Boguslavskaia (also known as Xana Puni) and Ivan Puni were spouses who gathered all Petrograd futurists in their apartment. Benedikt Livshits wrote “This was the Petersburg version of Exter's salon, only more bohemian. We all used to visit Puni’s place: Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Burliuk, Matyushin, Severyanin”. All the four artists decorated street celebrations in early Bolshevik Petrograd. In 1915, Puni organized the exhibitions “Tramway V” and “0.10”, both held in St Petersburg, in which Malevich, Tatlin, Ekster, Popova, Kliun, Rozanova, Udaltsova, Boguslavskaya and others participated. In 1919, Ivan Puni taught in the Vitebsk Art School. In 1920, the spouses emigrated to Berlin and then to Paris. While in exile, Boguslavskaia created cover art for German and Russian publishers and pursued stage design for the “Blue Bird” cabaret theater and the Russian Romantic Theatre.

Worldcat shows paper copies located in John Hopkins, Princeton and Stanford Universities, Getty Institute, Art Institute of Chicago and NYPL.

Price: $7,500.00