Aug 02, 2017 - Sale 2453

Sale 2453 - Lot 415

Price Realized: $ 975
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
DESIGNER UNKNOWN SEE USSR. 1931.
40x27 inches, 101 1/2x68 1/2 cm. Intourist, Moscow.
Condition A: minor creases, skinning and minor overpainting in margins; creases in image.
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.