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[JOHN REED CLUB] Vystavka amerikanskikh khudozhnikov “Dzhon Rid Klub” [i.e. Exhibition of American Artists of the John Reed Club]

Item #2733

Moscow: Izogiz, 1931. 48 pp. 20,5x13 cm. In original oversized illustrated wrappers. Front cover restored with corners supplied. Contemporary pencil underlinings in text. Otherwise very good. One of 2000 copies. The catalog was printed by students of the OGIZ technical school.

Constructivist architecture of the edition was created by M.A. Ilyin. The title page, like the front cover, combines horizontally set lines with others rotated 90 degrees. To draw attention to headlines, the designer used fonts of different sizes and bold, contrasting printer’s rules.

It starts with a propagandistic contrast: "Theirs, the capitalists' – ours in the USSR," before presenting a text quoting Stalin. It is followed by two introductory texts written by A. Stanley and Béla Uitz.

The John Reed Clubs were born at the start of the Great Depression in October 1929. Artists drawn to these clubs were largely sympathetic to the Soviet state, admiring its official patronage of revolutionary art. Many were also from working-class backgrounds, which resonated with the proletarian ethos promoted in the USSR.

The New York John Reed Club’s role was cemented in November 1930 at the Kharkiv International Conference of Revolutionary Writers, where it was designated the key cultural link (and party line transmitter) between the USSR and the USA. Its delegation included major figures: writers Michael Gold and Joshua Kunitz (representing both the Club and the Communist magazine ‘New Masses’), film critic Harry Alan Potamkin, and cartoonists William Gropper and Fred Ellis.

The importance American revolutionary artists placed on ties with the Soviet Union is evident from a single fact: between 1931 and 1932, they organized and sent two substantial shipments of artworks to Moscow, both financed by the John Reed Club in New York.

The first shipment arrived at the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) in late July 1931. Judging by the letters from Gropper and Potamkin that accompanied it, the goal was to initiate cultural exchange between Moscow and New York but also to kickstart international exhibitions “immortalizing the successful completion of the five-year plan”. Despite the failure of this ambitious plan, the works sent and Vladimir Tatlin. Lozowick was highly interested in the development of the Russian avant-garde and even published a monograph on Constructivism entitled “Modern Russian Art”. Burliuk didn’t visit the USSR until the 1950s but was active in pro-Soviet oriented groups in New York. Works by David Burliuk and Louis Lozowick were exhibited alongside other JRC members.

The catalogue lists 96 works divided into five thematic sections: 1) The U.S. Economic Crisis as a Manifestation of Global Crisis, 2) The Plight of the Black Working Masses in Capitalist America, 3) Fascism and Social-Fascism, 4) Wars and Intervention, 5) The International Proletariat and the Heartland of World Revolution – the USSR. Sixteen works were reproduced as full-page, black-and-white illustrations. One of them, Jacob Burck’s “Hunger March”, was also used on the front cover. Active in the Communist movement from 1926 as a political cartoonist and muralist, Burck quit the Communist Party after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1936, deeply offended by political demands there to manipulate his work.

Worldcat shows copies located in Illinois and John Hopkins Universities, Amherst College.

Price: $4,500.00

Status: On Hold