Poret, [Alisa], illustrator.

[SOVIET CHILDREN’S BOOK – AVANT-GARDE DURING THE COLD WAR] ABC: Angliiskaia azbuka [ABC: The English alphabet].

Leningrad: “Izdatel’stvo sovetskii khudozhnik”, 1948. Oblong octavo (16 × 23 cm). Original illustrated wrappers; [26] leaves of chromolithograph illustrations (with legends in Russian and English) to rectos. Light soil to wrappers; corners lightly scuffed; overall about very good. Item #55733

An early Cold-War era book for children learning the English alphabet, with vibrant chromolithograph illustrations by the avant-garde painter and graphic artist Alisa Poret (1902–1984). The bilingual volume in Russian and English presents an interesting case of an English language primer for Soviet children, with English progressively out of favor in the post-WWII period as the tensions between the Soviet Union and the other Allied powers were on the rise. The artist and illustrator Alisa Poret is best remembered for her collaborations with OBERIU (the Society of Real Art) poets such as Daniil Kharms, Aleksandr Vvedensky, and Nikolai Zabolotsky, who wrote absurdist or trans-sense poetry, and advocated primitivism in writing, claiming that “only the nonsensical is interesting.” Members of OBERIU also wrote for children’s publications such as Yozh and Chizh, for which Poret produced illustrations. Poret studied with Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin at VKhUTEIN (1921–1925), a hotbed of artistic experimentation, later becoming a student of another avant-garde master, Pavel Filonov, following his principles of “analytic realism”. A number of the books she illustrated during her close association with Filonov are pictured in Lur'e collection (Kniga dlia detei 1881–1939, Moscow: ULEI, 2009).

As of July 2026, not in KVK, OCLC.

Price: €350.00

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