[SOVIET AVANT-GARDE - PHOTOMONTAGE] Oformlenie massovykh prazdnestv za 15 let diktatury proletariata [The decoration of mass holidays during fifteen years of the dictatorship of the proletariat]

Moscow-Leningrad: OGIZ-IZOGIZ, 1932. Quarto (28.5 × 22.3 cm). Original photo-illustrated card wrappers by Solomon Telingater; [58] pp of illustrations and [19] half-leaves of text, with one large foldout photographic plate. Light soil to wrappers, professional restoration to spine extremities. Small stain to rear wrapper, with lower card corner spliting. Overall about very good, with the front wrapper and entire text block in exceptionally crisp and bright state.

A richly-illustrated overview of Soviet holiday decorations and mass processions in 1917-1932, the period of most active avant-garde experimentation, from photographs of the Futurist designs for the May 1st 1917 celebrations in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), to the large fold-out poster of the 1931 celebrations of the October Revolution in Moscow. Nathan Altman's cubist banner designs for the 1st anniversary of the Revolution in 1918 are discussed alongside Meyerkhold's staging of "Mystery-Bouffe," written especially for the festivities by Mayakovsky. The author provides a detailed analysis of the Futurist works, and declares them incomprehensible to the masses. The album also includes photographs of "mass actions" such as "The Overthrow of Autocracy" performed by the Red Army soldiers in 1919 (directed by Nikolai Vinogradov) and the more famous 1920 "The Storming of the Winter Palace" directed by Nikolai Evreinov. The author notes that of the 10,000 people expected to take part, only 6,000 were actually present. The album also includes photos of a procession bus painted by Kazimir Malevich, street decorations, light designs, banners, drawings, and posters by artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Isaak Brodsky, among many others. The text by the Soviet art historian Aleksandr Gushchin (1902-1950), a specialist in folk art and artists of the Paris Commune, appears on half-leaves, an element of constructivist design.

The photomontage illustrations and Constructivist design of the album was done by the team of graphic artists and typographers Solomon Telingater (1903-1969) and Nikolai Sedelnikov (1905-1994). Both artists studied at VKhUTEMAS in the early 1920s, often dubbed the Bauhaus of the Soviet Union for its experimental edge. In addition to working on books, Telingater did layout design for the Constructivist architecture periodical "CA" (Contemporary Architecture), as well as architectural periodicals "SSSR na stroike" (USSR in Construction) and "Stroitel'stvo Moskvy" (Construction of Moscow). Sedelnikov also designed numerous art and architecture periodicals such as "Stroitel'stvo Moskvy" [Construction of Moscow] and "Brigada khudozhnikov" [Artist brigade]. This album is not in Rowell/Wye, The Russian Avant-Garde Book, which shows over a dozen Constructivist publications designed by Solomon Telingater including his collaboration with El Lissitzky on the exhibition catalog on typography "All-Union Printing trades exhibition: guidebook" (1927) and with Gustav Klutsis' "Brigada Khudozhnikov" (1931).

Not in Karasik, The Soviet Photobook 1920-1941.

As of February 2025, KVK, OCLC show two copies worldwide, one in North America.