Rare books from Penka Rare Books and Archives

First and only edition of the important Russian cubo-futurist book, published by the "Liren" (Lyroon) group under its eponymous imprint, about which Vladimir Markov notes: "The birth of Lyroon seems to have taken place during the summer of 1914 in Krasnaya Polyana, a little place near Kharkov where the family of Sinyakov lived. The three Sinyakov sisters became closely connected with the futurist movement: Pasternak, Aseyev, and Khlebnikov were in love with them at different times. Aseyev married one of them, Oksana; Khlebnikov wrote about them in his poems. One of them, Maria, an artist, illustrated several futurist publications" (Russian Futurism, 244ff). Nikolai Aseev (1889-1963) was a Russian poet, playwright, and art activist who was close friends with both Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Paternak. In addition to the Lyroon group, he also was a key figure in the "Tsentrifuge" (Centrifuge) group alongside Sergei Bobrov and Pasternak. He was also a co-founder of the LEF Group, of Left Front of… Read More

The rare second edition of Biebl's work, but the first with Teige's constructivist typographic "montages" printed in black and pink. With an original "collage" of colored paper and printed text, also designed by Karel Teige for the limited preferential run of 115 copies, signed by the author and printed on Van Gelder paper. This is copy no. 89 (1-20 were hand-colored and hard-bound, 21-45 were colored and in a similar binding, 46 to 100 were issued as described above, and an additional 15 issues "hors commerce" were numbered I-XV and not for sale). Biebl was a Czech poet and Communist Party member, closely associated with other Czech Communist writers and poets such as Jiří Wolker and Vítězslav Nezval. After being recruited into the army in 1916, serving on the Balkan Front, and fighting in Montenegro, he returned home after being first taken captive and then hospitalized. He began writing poetry shortly thereafter, and then joined several avant-garde literary groups including… Read More

Two issues (all published) of a composite art publication by Włodzimierz Adamiak, Zbigniew Libera, and Zbyszko Trzeciakowski. A complex art object similar to underground compilations such as Tango and Fabryka, the two issues were issued in a print run of 100 each, each volume being a unique assemblage of multiples. With original works signed by Trzeciakowski, Libera, Aleksandra Trzeciakowska, Anna Goebel, and Marek Bocian. A splintering within the Kultura Zrzuty group led to an explosion of new group publications such as this one, as well SDS, Halo Haloo, and Hali Gali. Two issues (all published) of a composite art publication by Włodzimierz Adamiak, Zbigniew Libera, and Zbyszko Trzeciakowski. A complex art object similar to underground compilations such as Tango and Fabryka, the two issues were issued in a print run of 100 each, each volume being a unique assemblage of multiples. With original works signed by Trzeciakowski, Libera, Aleksandra Trzeciakowska, Anna Goebel, and Marek Bocian. A… Read More

Extremely rare album of charts and statistics formatted according to the Isotype system (International System of Typographic Picture Education). With its linocut pictograms printed in bold colors, the work is clearly based on the atlas Technik und Menschheit (Technology and Mankind) published in Vienna in 1932 by Otto Neurath together with graphic designer Gerd Arntz, although the present work features twice the number of Isotype plates. The striking photomontage section titles by A. V. Korotkov, with their red borders and their picture windows, continue, as it were, the Vienna atlas. Likewise, the linocut pictograms by V. D. Fatal'chuk and V. A. Kaganer correspond to the specifications of Gerd Arntz (1900-1988). Arntz had visited Moscow as the "first shock brigadier" for at least sixty days every year since the Institute of Pictorial Statistics (Izostat) was founded in 1931 to familiarize the entire Soviet Union with image statistics. Under Stalin, the Vienna method was seen primarily as a useful… Read More

Complete run of this scarce journal issued by Magazin Aka, a department store for modernist furniture and interior design founded in 1932 by modernist architect Bohuslav Fuchs, his brother A. Fuchs, and his wife Drahomíra Fuchsová (1902-1992). She primarily created various textile designs for the company, including for rugs, placemats, cushions and cover fabrics. An example of her work is pictured on issue 1 of the journal. Other works included glassware (some designed by Bohuslav Fuchs, Alois Metelák, and the Kavalier glass company), as well as ceramics and metalware. The second issue advertises the products of the "Aka weaving mills" run by Drahomíra Fuchsová, which produced "first rate hand-woven stuffs of all kind, every colour and size: hand-woven curtains... hand-woven and knitted carpets..." (rear wrapper). According to the rear wrapper of the first issue, other products of Aka had been exhibited at an exhibition of industrial design at the Stedelijk Museum in 1934-35, at a… Read More

A sizeable collection of 125 handbills, small posters, and advertising programs for silent film theaters across the Russian Empire, which captures the vibrant and changing film culture of pre-Revolutionary Russia, predominantly in Siberia and the far Eastern regions, with many of the posters produced in Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, Ussuriisk, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Vladivostok, and even Harbin (modern-day China). They are printed on a variety of colored stock using a range of decorative fonts and were produced ca. 1910-1916. The posters for "elektricheskii teatr" (electrical theater), also known as "elektrichka" and "illiuzion", range from variety theatre programs to star-driven dramas and action films featuring Asta Nielsen, Max Linder, Ivan Mosjoukine, and Vera Orlova. Some of the playbills are illustrated with film scenes, while others include librettos, reviews, order of programming, and information about musical accompaniment by famous musicians. An estimated 90% of films from this early period were… Read More

Significant collection of issues of this journal of Ukrainian trade unions, with articles covering a wide range of technical issues and industries, as well as the self-organization of trade unions and workers throughout Soviet Ukraine. Individual issues feature descriptions of the life of particular workers' brigades, such as steel workers and gas engineers; workers' cooperations in Donbas; the biography of particularly accomplished workers; "national-cultural" aspects of proletarian life; as well as the denunciations of "opportunists" and other enemies of progress. A rich document of factory life and labor issues during the period of rapid industrialization, when the Dniepr Hydroelectric Dam was being constructed, collectivization gained speed, "udarnik" shock workers were being championed, and just a few months before the Holodomor, the man-made famine that claimed millions of lives in Ukraine. The wrappers are illustrated with photographs showing workers on a wide variety of construction sites,… Read More

Gurgen Grigor'evich Sevak (1904-1981) was a Georgian-born Soviet Armenian linguist and Esperantist. His enduring fascination with the constructed language began in 1921, when he was still based in Tbilisi and took a course with retired general A. P. Andreev. He embarked on giving lectures, teaching courses, translating from Armenian and Georgian into Esperanto, and publishing articles about the movement. In 1923, Sevak was elected secretary of the Tbilisi-based Caucasian Esperanto Society. In 1924, he settled in Yerevan, where he studied at the university and would organize and preside over the Armenian Union of Esperantists, later serving as secretary of the Soviet Republican Esperanto Union (SEU). In 1926, he attended the international Esperanto congress in Leningrad. By the late 1920s, he was elected to the Lingva komitato, the highest linguist body of the Esperanto movement, which later became the Akademio de Esperanto (Academy of Esperanto). In 1930, Sevak authored a textbook of Esperanto for… Read More

The group includes: 1. "Prishel'tsy riadom: seriia iz 10 kartin, demonstriruiushchikh NLO s inoplanetian. S dopolnitel'nymi svedeniiami o kazhdom sluchae" [Aliens are near: a series of ten images which demonstrate UFOs and aliens. With supplementary information on each case]. Voronezh: NTO RES im. A. S. Popova, Sektsiia po izucheniiu anomal'nykh iavlenii, ca. 1980-1985. Folio (43 × 31 cm). Original card folder, with typewritten label affixed to front flap; housing pictorial title leaf with large alien figure, one leaf of typescript to rectos describing the ten incidents depicted within, and ten leaves of airbrushed images to rectos. Very good or better. This series of striking airbrushed stenciled images was meant to "demonstrate various types of aliens observed over the entire world in the last decades. Each image is created based on real eyewitness descriptions." The leaf of typescript describes the supposed encounters, with captions such as "A mysterious meeting with two beings in Tbilisi,… Read More

Nearly complete run of the most important German carnival periodical and a significant document of the German "Vormärz" period. After the first two years, Narrhalla became the brainchild of its second editor, Ludwig Kalisch (1814-1882), a German Jewish writer and publisher who also authored most of the articles. Aside from an outlet for more light-hearted humor, carnival journals such as this were an important forum for critizicing the repressive and feudalist aspects of German society, as well as lampooning its strict censorship laws. Kalisch's witty, caustic satire provoked the censors as early as 1843, and Narrhalla was temporarily forbidden in 1844. As revolutionary movements swept across Europe, Kalisch defended ever more clearly such rights as freedom of press, equality before the law, equal treatment for Jews, and other liberties. In 1848, the journal was shuttered by the censors. After the failed German Revolution of 1848, the journal remained prohibited for a decade; only beginning in… Read More

Remarkably substantial run of numbered newsletters by the CAyC (Center for Art and Communication) group, which was founded in the late 1960s by the art critic and entrepreneur Jorge Glusberg. The starting point was the idea of an interdisciplinary Latin American network that would link art, science, technology, and society. From the very beginning, the concept of linking different disciplines and areas of life was guided by the terms of systems theory and cybernetics. The group's first exhibition, which was held in 1969 under the title "Arte y Cibernética" (Art and Cybernetics), was programmatic. Not only artists, but also IT engineers, mathematicians, and sociologists played a leading role in the project. Among other things, newly developed automatic drawing machines were used for the exhibition. Computer-generated drawings were also reproduced using screen printing. The exhibition was so successful that it was not only shown in Buenos Aires, but also in Montevideo, Lima, Minneapolis, San… Read More

First edition of the rarest book of poems by Sergei Esenin (1895-1925), one of the most popular Russian lyric poets of the twentieth century. Esenin submitted the book to I. T. Blagov for publication in Berlin while en route to America with his third wife, the dancer Isadora Duncan. The collection "marked a transition to a darker theme of drunkenness and imminent death," a tendency continued in his subsequent critically acclaimed collection "Moskva kabatskaia" (Moscow Taverns, 1924). Four poems, including "Da! Teper' resheno! Bez vozvrata...," "Snova p'iut zdes', derutsia i plachut," "Syp', garmonika! skuka... skuka...," "Poi zhe, poi! Na prokliatoi gitare..." appeared for the first time in this collection. Esenin faced many difficulties during and after the trip. He and Duncan were initially denied entry into the United States on accusations of intent to spread Bolshevik propaganda. Esenin was in turn arrested and interrogated several times on his return to the USSR. This collection was famously… Read More

First and only edition of this important Japanese work on Futurism, a rare collaboration between the Russian artist David Burliuk and ShÅ«ichirō Kinoshita, a Japanese Futurist and member of Miraiha bijutsu kyōkai (Futurist Art Association) and later of the MAVO group, which was also heavily influenced by Futurism. The work of Marinetti was first published in Japanese translation in 1909, in the literary journal "Subaru", followed by an exhibition and catalog of Italian Futurist painting in 1912, which made several stops in Japan. In 1920, the "Futurist Art Association" was founded and in 1924 Marinetti would refer to the existence of a Futurist group in Japan in "Le Futurisme mondial." 1920 was also the year when Burliuk (1882-1967) arrived in Japan on his way from Siberia to what would eventually become his permanent home in the United States. He spent nearly two years in Japan, visiting various cities and stimulating a "First Exhibition of Russian Painting in Japan" in 1920. The present… Read More

Complete run of the important pre-war neo-Dadaist journal, which promotes an anti-Surrealist point of view throughout, starting with Bureau's open letter to André Breton on the front page of the first issue. Rare, especially with the second print version of the graphics. Other issues are subtitled "Démobilisation de la Poèsie." "Entartete Kunst" (concerning the notorious German exhibition of "Degenerate Art"), "Art Poétique," and "6 Manifestes." The group provided much energy to the Parisian avant-garde circle just prior to World War II and promoted a wide variety of performances, including jazz by Django Reinhardt and stage performances by the likes of Ribemont-Dessaignes and Apollinaire, as well as exhibitions of visual art. "Les Réverbères" was founded in December 1937 by Michel Tapié, Jean Marembert, Jacques Office, Pierre Minne, and Henri Bernard. Among other events, the group also organized "Tribute to Dada" soirées, which featured readings of texts by Tristan Tzara,… Read More

Rare photo-illustrated children's book, with photographs of ordinary objects taken from unusual angles by Grigorii Iablonovskii, which "transforms the defamiliarization of space and object into a game for the child reader. In the first half of the work, the 'snapshot-puzzles' (snimki-zagadki) ask the reader to guess at what is being pictured in the black-and-white photographs and, at the same time, to solve an arithmetic problem. The answers to both the visual and arithmetic puzzles are revealed in the second half of the book, where objects that were initially shot from unexpected angles or shown in unrecognizable close-ups-such as a grouping of eggs shot from above or a close-up of a household grater-are revealed from a more familiar angle. The photographed objects (alongside the solution to the mathematical problem) are refamiliarized, revealed as recognizable objects from everyday life" (Katherine M. H. Reischl, "In the Soviet School of Photography: Lessons in Photographic Literacy," 2018).… Read More