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[SOLOMON TELINGATER] Govorit Il’ich: (O zadachakh komsomola) [i.e. Lenin Speaking (About Komsomol Goals)].

Item #635

[Moscow]: OGIZ-Molodaya Gvardiya, 1932. 32, [32] pp.: ill. 22,5x18 cm. Pagination
includes insides of front and back covers. In original illustrated cardboards. Very good.
Boards rubbed with small fragments of the spine missing.
First and only edition. Scarce. Designed by Solomon Telingater (1903-1969).
The strong foundation of a purely polygraphic design solution for the book
was laid by its leading figures El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko. With the new
generation of modern artists, the features of photographic technology have started to
be viewed as the foundation of a new poetics, which allowed to show such aspects of
physical reality that escaped the eye brought up by traditional, «craft» technologies
of painting and graphics. One after another, representatives of the radical avant-garde
declare their rejection of painting for the sake of a more accurate, more reliable, more
economical - in a word, more modern - technology. N. Tarabukin said: “Reform of the
book industry from the inside will occur when the revolutionaries of typographical
production will be the printers themselves, and not the “outsiders” who the artists
are”. Solomon Telingater was a very special type of artist - he was a typographer.
Just like Tarabukin suggested, Telingater was inside printing house as well as at the
publishing house during printing of his works. The pioneer here was El Lissitzky,
who developed the theory of the visual book, but these ideas were widely spread in
the book at the turn of the 20s-30s as a result of the efforts of his young followers,
which he himself spoke of as a generation of artists who came out of the printing
house. Lissitzky declared Telingater to be the first of the younger generation of Soviet
designers. Unlike the constructivists of the first call, who worked primarily in painting,
architecture, theater, and from there transferred the laws of the new art to the book,
these were purely craft masters.

Work of book designer was more like work of engineer or constructor:
the book was edited and montaged like film, constructed like a complex structure,
designed like a monumental poster. Such book was not intended for an individual
reader, but for a collective impact. Its typography was supposed to reveal the pointing
and directing power of the word as a means of propaganda and agitation. This
edition is a great example of a new kind of book design - it is full of photographs and
photomontages, different types and font sizes, dynamic constructions, the contrast of
black and red colors, etc. In such political manifestos Telingater among other genres
found his unique style and laid grounds of future type design.
Worldcat locates copies at Syracuse University Library and Getty Research University.

Price: $3,500.00