Moscow: Izdatel'stvo “Leto-pechat’", [1915]. Folio (36 × 27 cm). Original printed card folder with three flaps, housing eight leaves of color lithographs to rectos, with simpler sketches lithographed to rectos. Signed and inscribed by the artist to flap (addressee's name illegible). With a small note in ink noting that the album was purchased in 1947 for 50 rubles. Portfolio worn, with restoration to folds and edges; contents very good.

Scarce portfolio of lithographs, containing portraits of WWI war prisoners, by the artist and journalist Iurii Artsybushev (1877–1952). An architect by training, Artsybushev is best remembered for his political caricatures and portraits. Starting in 1905 he edited Zritel’ (The observer), a journal of political caricature, which was shut down by the censor only five months after opening. Artsybushev was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison, a sentence he successfully appealed. He subsequently collaborated with other oppositional publications such as Ogonek (The flame) and Krivoe Zerkalo (The crooked mirror) and worked in theater and stage design. He also created court room drawings of a number of famous political cases during the 1910s. The exact circumstances of his creation of the portraits in this album are not known. After the Revolution, he created series of portraits of the leaders of the Bolsheviks as well as of leaders of the White movement, attending meetings of the Petrograd Soviet, the State Conference, and the Constituent Assembly, creating most famously his 1918 “Dictatorship of the proletariat” album, which included numerous portraits of Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev, among others. This and his other albums were censored and withheld from circulation through most of the Soviet period for containing images of repressed political figures. Artsybushev emigrated with his family in 1919. His return to the Soviet Union after WWII led to arrest and exile. A 2017 Moscow exhibition “Portraits of the Revolutionary Period” was based largely on Artsybushev‘s work.

Book ID: 51845

Price: $3,500.00