Moscow, State Printing Office, Leningrad, Pechatnyi Dvor, 1926.
8vo, publisher’s illustrated wrappers. Title page in German, title page in Russian, 99 pp., (3) pp., Russian text, 15 b/w plates by Masereel. Cover by Veniamin Belkin (1884-1951), Russian and Soviet artist, painter, graphic artist, member of the exhibition group “Sixteen” (1922-1928), founding member of the “Society of Painters” (1928-1930). Complete.
Rare first Russian edition of an “anti-bourgeois” and “satirical” picture of post-war Europe by the noted Hungarian playwright, novelist, and essayist Arthur Holitscher (1869-1941), whose irreverent books were destroyed by the Nazi regime.
Illustration by the important Belgian painter and graphic artist Frans Masereel (1889-1972), the father of the Graphic Novel and one of his generation’s most iconic practitioners of the woodcut.
One of 4000 copies, a small number in terms of Russian publishing.
A very good copy, with faint traces of use.
Ref. Not in Roger Avermaete, Frans Masereel, 1968, p. 267, 31 (German edition) / Not in Luc Durtain, Frans Masereel, 1931
