Lot 42: TELINGATER, SOLOMON. 1903-1969. Russian Books and Photographs

Kachestvennaya stal SSSR ot VI k VII sezdy sovetov[Quality Steel of the USSR from the VI to VII Congress of Soviets]. Moscow and Leningrad: ONTI NKTP SSSR, 1935. 8vo.164 pp. Illustrated with two color and black and white photomontages and charts designed by S. Telingater, drawings by Mieczyslaw Vasilyevich Dobrokovsky and photographs by Vladimir Teobaldovich Griuntal. Original stamped gray cloth.Edges rubbed, internal soiling. This ambitious volume is dedicated to the extraordinary strides of the Soviet steel industry under Stalin's Five Year Plan.The frontispiece plays on the nom de guerre "Stalin" from stal,the Russian word for "steel":a thin sheet of stainless steel inserted between two sheets of heavy paper stock with a cut-out of a silhouette of Joseph Stalin. The book was also issued in a special steel binding.El Lissitzky declared Telingater to be the first of the younger generation of Soviet designers.He was a master of photomontage and Constructivist poster and book design. He received a gold medal at the 1937 Paris Exhibition of Art and Technology for his book design. V. T. Griuntal belonged to the photography division of the October union of artists headed by Aleksandr Rodchenko.Polish born illustrator M. V. Dobrokovsky also won a gold medal at the 1925 the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris and worked on such books as Massy vozhdiu [The Mass Leader] (1934) and Sotsialicticheskoe stroitelstvo v SSSR [Socialist Construction in the USSR] (1936).He was arrested and shot in 1937. OCLC records only one copy in the Getty (steel binding).