Fedorchenko, S[ofiia] and N[atalia] Ushakova, artist.

[AVANT-GARDE FOR SOVIET CHILDREN – FORGOTTEN WOMEN ARTISTS] Ugadai [Guess what].

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1929. Octavo (19 × 15 cm). Original chromolithographed staple-stitched wrappers; 11 pp. including wrappers. Illustrations throughout. Significant professional restoration to wrappers; internally very good. Item #55677

A volume of riddles for children about everyday objects, including period-specific items such as a primus stove and a hand-cranked meat grinder, with chromolithograph illustrations by Nataliia Ushakova (1899–1990), a prolific Soviet graphic designer, photographer, and illustrator of numerous children's books. A self-taught artist, Ushakova was mentored through correspondence by the master graphic artist and VKhUTEMAS professor Nikolai Kupreianov, to whom Ushakova sent her drawings for critique. She would go on to illustrate children’s books by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Agniia Barto, Sergei Mikhalkov, and Nataliia Konchalovskaia, among others. The author of the riddles, Sofiia Fedorchenko (1888–1959) came to fame as a pioneer of documentary prose. She published her first volume, “Narod na voine” (People at war), in 1918, based on materials she gathered as a frontline nurse during WWI (published in English in 1919 under the title “Ivan Speaks”). A second part of the book, documenting comments and reflections of “the simple people” about the immediate post-revolutionary period was published in 1925, with both volumes meeting with great success. Authors such as Aleksandr Blok and Maksim Gorki admired the work, with the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein comparing her exposition style to that of James Joyce. Fedorchenko began writing for children in 1924, publishing over two dozen children’s books before she ceased writing altogether in 1930, likely due to the critiques of her earlier work. Despite the acclaim both Ushakova and Fedorchenko received in their lifetime, their names seldom appear in historical accounts today. This volume not in the Lur'e collection (Kniga dlia detei 1881–1939, Moscow: ULEI, 2009).

As of March 2026, KVK, OCLC show only one copy worldwide, in North America.

Price: €950.00

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