7.5x5.75" [19x15cm] 24 pp., original decorative stapled wrappers.
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Nashi Tropiki (Our Tropics) is a children's introduction to the geography and agriculture of the Soviet tropics [Batumi, Georgia] made by Russian avant-garde artist Lev Bruni. A masterful work of children's illustration consisting mostly of full-page drawings with limited text.
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Our Tropics describes how the fruits eaten by Soviet children are grown in the lush tropics of Batum, in the Soviet state of Georgia. Paintings of Georgian men, women, and children in food production roles such as collecting tea seeds in the state farms, collecting mandarins, etc. The message behind the drawings recounts the achievements of Soviet agriculture. A short introductory text explains that, until quite recently, this area had been a landscape of relatively unproductive fields and forests. The illustrations also portray the changing role of women in Soviet culture. Although they wear traditional garb, they no longer are required to be fully veiled, as seen in a picture captioned 'An ancient street in Batum', where a young mother with a face veil looks directly at the viewer while another woman in the background is in chador.
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CONDITION: Good. A clean, bright copy overall. No marks and except for a small nick at bottom of spine, no tears. Front and rear panels lightly crinkled near spine, light vertical crease on back panel. Two small bits of old cello tape residue inside front panel, another inside rear panel. They are not tape repairs; we suspect the result of something having been laid in.
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Lev Bruni [1894-1948] was born into a family of artists [the 16th artist in his family]. He spent part of his youth in Paris studying painting, sculpture, and architecture. On his return to St. Petersburg in 1913 he entered a circle of artists with a shared interest in constructivism, the Russian social industrial art movement that later influenced Bauhaus and De Stijl.
Bruni began illustrating for a Soviet magazines and creating bas reliefs and festive decoration for cafes and cityscapes. He was also actively engaged in book illustration, including "Stories" by Rudyard Kipling (1929), "Lyrics" (the Sufi epic "Shah-Name", 1930). In the 1930s-40s, he worked in the field of monumental art, creating murals and paintings for the Central House of pioneers in Moscow, the USSR pavilion at the world exhibition in Paris (1937), and the Central theater of the Red Army in Moscow (1939-1940). [Ref: The Century of Russian Book Art (Moscow 2005), p. 99. "Russian avant-garde childrens books."
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WorldCat shows 6 copies. No others currently available currently available online.