Olga Rozanova 1886-1918

The extremely rare complete set comprising the front cover with collage, nine woodcuts, one collage, five text pages and contents page with additional poems, 1916, printed by Typographia CVET, published by Andrej Shemshurin, Petrograd, 1916, on various papers, one woodcut and the collage mounted on sturdy grey card, with margins, some minor foxing, water staining and surface dirt, occasional short tears and small losses at edges of sheets, front cover with several tears and losses, lacking back cover



The set comprises:

War, printed in red on laid paper

Destruction of the Village, printed in black on wove paper

Aeroplanes over the Town, collage

To the Death, printed in black on wove paper

Battle, printed in green on wove paper

Extract from a press cutting, printed in green on wove paper

Extract from a press cutting, printed in black on wove paper

Battle in the Town, printed in dark green and red, supported on grey card

Battle, printed in green on wove paper

Battle in the Three Spheres, printed in red on wove paper

"Rozanova's War is subjective and elusive. Her colour linoleum cuts accompanying Kruchenykh's poetry were conceived within the artistic current of Futurism, drawing inspiration directly from the present. She combines the stringent documentary quality of newspaper chronicles (Excerpt from a Newspaper Bulletin) with elements of the romantic grotesque and the fantastic (Airplanes over the City). In a collage for the cover, she clearly applied her knowledge of Suprematism. In its solemn simplicity of colours and shapes, this work can be compared with Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist canvases shown at the Last Futurist Exhibition of Pictures: 0:10 of 1915."

(excerpt from the article The Theme of War by Nina Gurianova, page 94 of The Russian Avant-Garde Book)

Literature:

Rainer Michael Mason, Guerre s, trois suites insignes sur un thème 1914-1916 Natalija Gontcharova, Ol'ga Rozanova, Aleksej Kruchenykh, Cabinet des Estampes, Genève, 2003, see pages 69 to 77
Margit Rowell and Deborah Wye, The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910-1934, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, see no.131