Jar-Ptitza No 7 1922

Now rare, some dozen Jar-Ptitza ["Fire Bird"] Russian Review of Art and Literature quarterly issues were published in Berlin between 1921 and 1923 in Berlin (and with some distribution from London and New York and, possibly, Paris). The series was published to celebrate the emigre artists, writers, dancers and musicians who had left Russia after the revolution to other emigre Russians. Although the main text is Russian, the series was made as accessible as possible to non-Russian readers by including a fair amount of German in each issue, while the illustration captions were in English and French as well as Russian and German.

Six of these issues - Numbers 2, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12 - are included as lots in the present auction.

In this issue, a reproduction of a painting of a peacock over a castle by Shleekt is pasted on to the upper cover board. The plain endpapers are unmarked though lightly foxed. iv + 32 pp of gloss art with colour and b/w illustrations and text in Russian + 16 pp of text and b/w graphics on matt stock, half in Russian and half in German + inserted black card leaf with gilt rules and lettering and a colour reproduction of a painting by Somov tipped in - all unmarked and undiscoloured. The captions are in four languages.

Other artists represented in this issue include Pasternak, Loukomsky, Jarjevich, Sondeikin and Grigorieff, while there are photographs of the ballet dancer duo Fokine and Fokina and a drawing of Rachmaninoff at the piano.