Apr 24, 2014 - Sale 2346

Sale 2346 - Lot 19

Price Realized: $ 30,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
ALEXANDER RODCHENKO (1891-1956) [DOBROLET.] 1923.
13 5/8x18 inches, 34 1/2x45 3/4 cm.
Condition B+: discoloration and remnant of banner in the center of bottom edge; two pin holes along right edge; creases in top of image and in lower left corner. Mounted to stiff paper, with light bubbling along the left edge. With the Rodchenko Archive stamp on the back, and pencil notations in an unknown hand.
Dobrolet, the Russian Society of Volunteer Airfleet, was founded in 1923, as part of Lenin's New Economic Policy, which allowed for a form of limited capitalism in certain large businesses. As a partially public company it originally sold shares to Russian citizens. Rodchenko was employed to help market the company, and went on to design posters and other advertising material for the company. The text on this posters reads, "To All . . . If one is not a shareholder of Dobrolet, one is not a citizen of the USSR / One golden ruble makes everyone a shareholder of Dobrolet." During the mid to late-1920's Rodchenko worked with Vladimir Mayakovsky on advertising campaigns for Mosselprom and GUM as well as Dobrolet. In the 1930s, the company lost its shareholder status and became part of the Soviet collective economy -- becoming "Aeroflot." Rodchenko, who was young and virtually unknown when he began his association with Dobrolet, used "simple geometric forms as the material for visual inventions and combinations . . . by means of pure geometric forms, all the shapes were transformed into symbolic patterns (signs), that could be visually simple and as clearly understandable as letters of the alphabet" (Rodchenko / Luftahansa p. 31). This poster was printed in four different color schemes, including red and black, red and green and red and blue. Rodchenko 82, Modern Poster p. 134 (var), Avant Garde p. 120 (var), Rodchenko / Lufthansa p. 68 (var), Aeroflot p. 17 Hoffnung und Wiederstand p. 161.
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