Bookvica

[MAVRINA’S ABC] Skazochnaia azbuka [i.e. The Fairy-Tale Alphabet]

MAVRINA, Tatiana A.

Item #2914

Moscow: Goznak, 1969. [40] pp.: color ill. 30.5×25.4 cm [12×10 in.]. Original publisher’s orange wrappers lettered in gilt. Light rubbing to spine and extremities; otherwise near fine.

A large-format alphabet book entirely illustrated and designed by Mavrina, printed in brilliant colors with gold and silver highlights. Instead of conventional typographic letters, Mavrina treats each Cyrillic initial as a pictorial composition filled with figures, animals, ornament, and episodes from Russian fairy tales. The visual language draws on lubok, decorated manuscript initials, folk toys, painted wood, and other forms of Russian popular art. The book contains numerous identifiable references to Russian folk tales as well as Pushkin, Ershov, and Krylov; one study identifies at least 44 separate fairy-tale and literary references within the alphabet.

Tatiana Alekseevna Mavrina (1900–1996) was a painter, graphic artist, theatre designer, and one of the most distinctive Soviet illustrators of children’s books. She studied at VKhUTEMAS- VKhUTEIN in Moscow and exhibited with the group The Thirteen in 1929 and 1931. In the postwar period her work increasingly turned toward Russian folk and medieval artistic traditions, developing the bright, decorative manner seen at its fullest in Skazochnaia azbuka. The Russian Museum notes that she illustrated more than 200 books.
Mavrina received the USSR State Prize in 1975, in part for a cycle that included Skazochnaia azbuka, and in 1976 became the first Soviet illustrator to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, IBBY’s principal international award for children’s-book illustration.

See Leveque Plantureux, p. 175.

Price: $750.00