My Sister - Life

[New York]: The Limited Editions Club, 1991. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Fine. Kuper, Yuri. No. 65 of 250, elephant folio size, 89 pp., signed by Yuri Kuper. Boris Pasternak (1890-1960) is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his novel, "Doctor Zhivago" - it was smuggled out of the USSR and published in Milan in 1957, earning Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. This work, "My Sister - Life", is his first published collection of poems and is considered one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language. Controversial when it was first published five years after the October Revolution of 1917, the revolutionary spirit pervades the poems - not in the political sense but in the spirit of beginning again.

The artist, Yuri Kuper (b. 1940), has worked in several mediums, and his work for "My Sister - Life" recalls the Russian Constructivists' radical, dynamic, geometric abstractions in his use of strong diagonals and primarily geometric forms. Kuper has exhibited at galleries in Europe and the United States, and his work forms part of the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts, and the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris (n. b., above info from Wikipedia and the LEC newsletter).

___DESCRIPTION: Half grey Nigerian oasis goatskin with boards covered in handmade paper made by cutting Russian newspapers into minute pieces which were then incorporated with the rags and cotton pulp, author's name in Cyrillic embossed in black on the spine, fore- and bottom edges uncut, endpapers and text pages of the same hand-made paper as that covering the boards, six full-page etchings with tissue guards by Yuri Kuper bound in throughout the text; type Monotype Scotch Roman, handmade paper as referred to above, elephant folio size (19.5" by 16"), pagination: [i-iv] [1] 2-81 [82] [1 colophon], one of 250 copies, this number 65, signed by the Yuri Kuper on the colophon page. LEC Monthly Newsletter loosely laid in. Housed in a slipcase covered in linen cloth, lined with light grey velveteen.

___CONDITION: Volume is fine, the leather spine and corners are smooth and supple, the colour of the spine deep and true (not sunned), the paper boards not rubbed; with a strong, square text block, solid hinges, perfectly straight corners with no rubbing, the interior is clean and bright, and it is entirely free of prior owner markings; two miniscule shallow scrapes to the fore-edge of the back board, spine is lightly sunned, else fine. The newsletter is also fine, with no folds, creases or edge wear. The slipcase is fine as well, strong and sturdy, the cloth covering slightly sunned on one side, but without wear.

___POSTAGE: International customers, please note that due to the large size and weight of this volume, additional postage may apply; please contact us for details.

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