It is always inspiring to receive an announcement introducing an unknown aspect of Merrill C. Berman’s seemingly bottomless repository of vintage graphic design. This month, word came of a new webpage devoted to Soviet designer Mikhail Razulevich (1904-1993). Razulevich’s attributed book jackets, covers, and posters are new to me, but as the brief text indicates, his avant-garde bona fides from the 1920s and 1930s are well represented in Berman’s collection.
Razulevich was active in literature for youth and children, as the website explains, “designing for the branch of Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo (Gosizdat; State Publishing House) specializing in children’s literature (known as Detgiz or Detizdat) and for Molodaia gvardiia (Young Guard), among other publishers.”
Children were an important target for state-generated information, and encouraging knowledge through the visual language of photo-montage and typo-foto was left to artists like Razulevich, who studied at the VKhUTEIN (Higher Art Technical Institute) in Leningrad. He took part in the Salon International du Livre d’ Art (International Art Book Fair). Petit Palais des Beaux-Arts, Paris (May 15–August 15, 1931), alongside Proletkult (proletarian) artists, Lubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Nathan Altman, Alexander Deineka, Gustav Klutsis, Yuri Pimenov, Sergei Senkin, Varvara Stepanova, Solomon Telingater, and David Shterenberg.
For the past fifty years, Berman has been the foremost private collector of rare printed works and also the sketches, maquettes and proofs for as much of the mass-produced material as he has uncovered. For regular updates on the Merrill C. Berman Collection, including exhibitions where his artifacts are on loan, visit here.
Children’s book cover. S[ergei] Bezborodov, Shest’ uslovii pobedy (Six Conditions for Victory), c. 1932.
Children’s book cover: M. Ilyin, Rasskaz o velikom plane (The Story of the Great Plan), c. 1930.
Maquette for book cover: L. Valershtein, ed. Za bol’shevistskie zheleznye dorogi (For the Bolshevik Railways). Po resheniiam iiun’skogo i oktiabr’skogo plenumov TsK VKPb (According to the Decisions of the June and October Plenums of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks), c. 1932.
Book cover: Goroda i derevni. Literaturno-khudozhestvennye al’manakhi (Cities and Villages, Literary and Artistic Almanacs), c. 1926.
Book cover: V. Rumiantsev and P. Veber, [Rabkory-udarniki– politekhnicheskoi shkole]. Pobezhdaem prostranstvo ([Shock-workers—correspondents to Polytechnic school]. Conquering Space), c. 1932
Book cover: V. Toboliakov, Voda i veter na sluzhbe cheloveka (Water and Wind in the Service of Man), c. 1934.
Children’s book cover: Olga Trizna, Sapozhnik-velikan (Giant Shoemaker), c. 1931
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