Nov 19, 2015 - Sale 2399

Sale 2399 - Lot 23

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
DESIGNER UNKNOWN SEE USSR. 1931.
40x26 3/4 inches, 101 1/2x68 cm. Intourist, Moscow.
Condition B+: repaired tears in margins; creases and minor abrasions in margins and image; light staining in upper margin.
Rather ironically, the "State Joint Stock Company for Foreign Tourists," (Intourist, the Soviet State Travel agency) was formed in April 1929, just six months prior to the stock market crash that plunged the Western world into the Depression. "As Socialist Realism was gradually taking over and the era of the avant-garde was coming to an end, there were no official guidelines on the Intourist style, and in the first two or three years it was still up to the artists and the Committee to decide how to address the discriminating Western audience" (Intourist p. 17). This appealing study implies the vastness of the Soviet Union, incorporating day and night, winter and summer, and nature and architecture into the image. Voyage p. 126, Intourist pl. 4.