The collection of books of Russian avant-garde and futurism, collected by the bibliophile Paul Destriba, is put up for auction. Relevant information appeared on the website of the auction house Christie’s.
The “Avant-Garde Library” includes printed publications created or designed by Russian avant-garde artists from 1912 to the early 1930s. A total of 229 lots will be offered, with a preliminary estimate ranging from €770,000 to €1.9 million.
Among the top lots of the auction are the works of women artists, in particular, nine books illustrated by Natalia Goncharova, including the collection “The World from the End” by Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh. Olga Rozanova is represented by more than 15 works, including the books “Universal War” and “War”.
As for male artists, Wassily Kandinsky is represented by catalogs of numerous exhibitions or various collective publications, Kazimir Malevich – by lithographs for collections of poems by Kruchenykh, published in 1913.
According to Adrien Legendre, Director of Books and Manuscripts at Christie’s France, there has never been such an outstanding and significant collection dedicated to the fusion of printing, art and poetry on the international book market.
“The auction will open up an area of collector’s books, hitherto little known to international collectors, and serve as a model for future collectors,” a spokesman for Christie’s shared with Izvestia.
On February 9, the auction house “12th Chair” held an auction, at which an archive of the materials of the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was presented. So, at the auction were presented a typescript with the author’s editing of the novel “In the First Circle”, a typescript of the poem “Enthusiasts’ Highway” with author’s corrections and an autograph “I read it, corrected the mistakes, it seems there will be no others”, handwritten outlines of letters to the Nobel Committee, the first handwritten version “Letters to the leaders of the Soviet Union” and others.
One of the most valuable lots is a typescript with the author’s revision of the novel “The Gulag Archipelago” and the autograph “I do not exclude the possibility of further corrections in my lifetime, but as of 1969 this is the final version.”
Source: IZ
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