Apr 24, 2014 - Sale 2346

Sale 2346 - Lot 29

Price Realized: $ 5,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
VALENTINA KULAGINA (1902-1987) [INTERNATIONAL WORKING WOMEN'S DAY / IS THE FIGHTING DAY OF THE PROLETARIAT.] 1931.
39 1/2x27 1/2 inches, 100 1/4x70 cm.
Condition B / B-: extensive restored losses at edges into image; repaired tears, creases, abrasions, restoration and overpainting in margins and image. Linen mounted.
Best known as being the wife of Gustav Klutsis, Valentina Kulagina was an exceptional artist in her own right, working on posters and book and exhibition designs. She met her future husband in 1920 when she enrolled as a student at Vkhutemas where he was teaching. Together they worked closely on photomontages, taking pictures at parades (and sometimes posing themselves), to capture the enthusiastic movement of the masses which they needed to fulfill various assignments. At the end of the 1920s, she departed from the sole use of photographic material in her work and began to incorporate graphic elements within her montages. This was unique at a time when photography had been unofficially adapted as the primary tool of the graphic propaganda machine. Klutsis pl. 100, Hoffnung und Widerstand p. 161.