Ilo. Kirjanduslik kuukiri. (Beauty, a Literary Monthly)

Tartu: Odamees, 1919 Published in 12 numbers from 1919-1921. Large octavos, 34 to 68pp. each, Nos. 1-12 (all published), bound in ½-calf. Each issue contains full-page illustrations, with many original graphics. Complete issues are bound here without covers. Each issue showcases graphic work of a single artist. Among them are August Roosileht (Nos 1, 9), Jaan Vahtra (no.3), Paul Liivak (no. 4), Felix Valloton (no.5), F. Kask (no.7), Voldemar Kangro-Pool (no. 8, 10). Each issue includes literary contributions by Estonia s leading modernists ---Marie Under, Gustav Suits, August Alle, Friedebert Tuglas, Johannes Semper, the avant-gardist Johannes Barbarus, as well as numerous translations of Walt Whitman, Rilke, Huysmans, inter alia. The editor F. Tuglas was a driving force behind Estonian publishing in the first years of the new republic. ILO was published during the postwar period which saw a plethora of short-lived journals; it enjoys a high prestige in its tone and vision that stood above the common polemics and manifestos that characterized most of the others. Tartu was the center of the Estonian avant-garde, where the Pallas art school was founded in 1918. championed cubist, expressionist and experimental work, whereas Tallinn s academy was marked by more conservative outlook and slower to incorporate a new vision. It would soon overtake Tartu in the 1920s, however. Rare, with two North American library holdings (Columbia, Princeton).