Pevzner, T[eodor] (born Tevel’ Iosifovich Raichuk).

[SOVIET CHILDREN’S BOOK – AVANT-GARDE] Dikovinnye ptitsy [Exotic birds].

Leningrad: GIZ, 1930. Octavo (19.8 × 14.8 cm). Original staple-stitched pictorial self-wrappers; 12 pp. Illustrations throughout. Light moisture stain to wrapper edges; rust to staples; ink inventory mark to upper corner of front wrapper; still about very good. Item #55705

A collection of the most charismatic and exotic birds for children, by the illustrator, graphic designer, and poster artist Teodor Pevzner (1904–1941), most of whose works perished in Leningrad during the WWII blockade. The chromolithograph illustrations in this volume combine the effects of painting and graphic art, a technique Pevzner would continue to develop at the Experimental Printing Workshop (EPM), also known as the “graphic laboratory” at the Leningrad Union of Artists in the 1930s. In 1922–1926 Pevzner studied at VKhUTEIN/VKhUTEMAS, a nexus of avant-garde experimentation in the immediate post-Revolutionary period. He would go on to work as an illustrator for leading children’s magazines such as “Chizh” (The Goldfinch), “Ezh” (The Hedgehog), and “Koster” (The Campfire), also illustrating books for the children’s publishing house Detgiz, such as this one. At the onset of WWII, Pevzner joined “Boevoi karandash” (The battle pencil), a Leningrad group of artists making agitational posters for the war effort. Pevzner died during the Leningrad blockade, with many of his works also destroyed at this time.

This volume is not in the Lur'e collection (Kniga dlia detei 1881–1939, Moscow: ULEI, 2009), which shows two other books by the artist from this period, including a volume on domesticated birds (nos. 464, 465).

As of April 2026, not in KVK, OCLC (which show two copies of a different children’s book by the same title, illustrated by Dmitrii Bulanov in 1925).

Price: €950.00

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