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[MOOR & CHEKHONIN COLLABORATION] Piatiletie oktiabrskoi revolutsii [i.e. The Five Years of October Revolution]

Sosnovskiy, L.

Item #972

Moscow: Krasnaia Nov, [1922]. 44 pp., 36 ill. 23x18,5 cm. Original illustrated wrappers designed by Sergei Chekhonin (1878-1936). Some restoration to the spine, but otherwise a good copy.
Extremely rare. Only two copies according to the Worldcat are at Stanford and NYPL.
The book is the graphic and photographic celebration of the achievements of the Soviet rule in the first years of existence. The importance of this edition is in its visual side, as it captures an interesting moments in Soviet book design, heavily influenced by the abstract tendencies in art, but before the forming of official ‘leftist’ ideology by the Left Front of Arts.
As a result we could see some of the artists involved in the production of the book outside of their usual genre: the best example is Dmitrii Moor (1883-1946), who is best known for his propaganda posters and creating the infernal satirical images in the main anti-religious magazine of the 1920s ‘Bezbozhnik’. In his works submitted for this publication we could trace some of the roots for that infernality in the series of four lithographs, in which the artist allegorically pictures the process of the revolution: ‘The Fight’, ‘The Victims’, ’The Labour’ and ‘The Victory’. The images of the muscular man of the new world echoes with Moor’s design at the time done for Gastev’s ‘Rebel of the Culture’, quite possibly he was inspired by Gastev’s ideas creating this series.
Another interesting example is Vladimir Komardenkov (1897-1973), Malevich student, he has been working as a decorator in Zimin theater before the revolution. After 1925 he is primarily known as a designer for the cinema, during his life he has tried different modernist styles, in this book the compositions ‘Call for Rebellion’, ‘The power of the Soviets’, ’Red Army’ and ‘The Labour’ lean towards the Leningrad ROSTA aesthetics.
Chekhonin who has designed the wrapper, the frontispiece and one other composition, is himself in the prime of his Soviet design stage. Accepting the revolution the former core member of ‘Mir Iskusstv’a, has been living in Leningrad and served as art director of the State Porcelain Factory at the time, creating the genre now known as the ‘propaganda porcelain’.
It’s hard to underestimate Chekhonin’s role in early Soviet book design, as the contributor of the classical work ‘The Modern Russian Graphics’ (1914) before the revolution and the designer for the books by ZInoviev, Lunacharskiy, John Reed, etc. in the early 1920s, while in the meantime heavily contributing to the standards of the children’s book design.
Also it’s worth mentioning that the book ‘Vlast’ sovetov za 10 let’ [i.e. The Rule of Soviets in 10 years] also designed by Chekhonin in the similar manner is known better and held wider than this one. This one includes the full-page Trotsky photograph, which might explain why it became rarer.
It’s worth noting two cubo-futuristic images of the hammer and the sickle by V. Fidman and the wide variety of historical photographs, including the photos fro Central Asian republics, the shots of Moscow garrison on the red square and the photos of the celebrations of the 1st of May, the images of the children in the orphanages, et al.

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