The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910–1934

The catalogue of the Museum of Modern Art's 2002 exhibition of Russian avant-garde books, the first full account of the Judith Rothschild Foundation gift of some 1,200 books, journals and related printed works that made MoMA's holdings in the field the largest outside Russia.

The volume follows the book from the Futurist lithographed pamphlets of 1910 to 1916, in which Kruchenykh, Khlebnikov, Goncharova, Larionov, Rozanova and Malevich set handwritten and rubber-stamped text against coarse paper and collaged covers, through the Suprematist and Constructivist typography of Lissitzky and Rodchenko after 1917, to the photomontage propaganda albums and children's books of the early Stalin years. Essays by Margit Rowell, Deborah Wye, Nina Gurianova, Gerald Janecek and Jared Ash cover the poets' collaborations, the transrational language of zaum, the printed word as a Constructivist object and the political turn of the late 1920s. The exhibition ran at MoMA from 28 March to 21 May 2002, organised by Wye, then chief curator of prints and illustrated books, with Rowell as guest curator.

The catalogue is out of print. It sits with the library's other Russian avant-garde holdings, including Lodder's Russian Constructivism and MoMA's Stenberg Brothers.