Volume with 34 lithographs on smooth cream wove paper, 1920. 218x180 mm; 8 5/8x7 1/8 inches (sheets), full margins.
Edition of approximately 100. Ex-collection Moisey Kunin, an artist and student of Malevich at the Vitebsk Art Labor Caooperative, thence by descent to the current owner. Printed with the assistance of El Lissitzky at the Unovis Lithographic Workshop. Published by Unovis (Affirmation of New Art), Vitebsk. Scattered pale staining on the outside covers and minor offsetting internally, splitting at the spine, lacks the printed paper wrappers, otherwise generally in good condition.
In 1919, Malevich succeeded Marc Chagall as Director of the Vitebsk Art Labor Cooperative and subsequently formed Unovis and the Unovis Lithographic Workshop, to which he appointed El Lissitzky as a professor of architecture and applied arts. El Lissitzky might have hand printed the lithographs himself at Unovis in 1920 before his departure for Berlin, where he worked to establish contacts between artists in the USSR and Germany.
Though considered to have been printed in an edition of around 100, the number of extant copies is likely significantly less owing to the fact that some copies were probably destroyed in reaction to Malevich's work being regarded as subversive and that later many unsold copies were lost during the destruction of Vitebsk in 1941. We have found only 2 other copies at auction in the last 20 years. Karshan 37-71.
