Lot 4344: Petrusov, Georgy: "Socialist Contract"

"Socialist Contract". 1934. Vintage gelatin silver print on matte paper. 28,4 x 48,9 cm. Mounted to original cream colored heavy paper (mat torn and soiled), inscribed in Cyrillic in purple ink, numbered in pencil on the verso.
The Russian photographer Georgy Petrusov developed an interest in photography in his youth and began working as a professional photojournalist when he moved to Moscow in 1924. He documented the industrialization of the country after the Revolution of 1917, working until c. 1930 for the newspapers Trud and Pravda. From 1930 to 1941 he worked for SSSR na stroyke, and early issues of the magazine were filled with his photographs. His series on life on the cooperative farms, for example "To the Sound of Music and Carrying Banners, the Workers Start the Joint Harvest" (1933), are especially memorable, inspiring images. Petrusov brought the same strong sense of composition and drama to his portraits and his pictures from World War II, when he reached Berlin with the Soviet Army. From 1957 to 1971 he worked for Sovetskaya zhizn (Soviet Life) and other magazines. - A grainy soft print with bumped edges and one spot on the left, left side of the image thought to be folded by El Lissitzky for reproduction, otherwise in very good condition.
Provenance: Probably from the private collection of El Lissitzky.
Lit.: Margarita Toupitsyn. El Lissitzky. Jenseits der Abstraktion. Fotografie, Design, Kooperation. Munich 1999, ill. p. 198.