Lot 30A email save

CHAGALL, Marc (1887-1985) and [Pinhas COHENOVICH (

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Petrograd: Vilner ferlag fun B. A. Kletzin, 1917. 30 pp., 8vo (159 x 118 mm). With 8 letterpress illustrations by Chagall. Original decorated wrappers designed by Chagall. Condition: wrappers soiled, small sticker to front wrapper, faded ink stamps to front and back wrappers. chagall's only children's book. A renaissance in Jewish illustration resulted when the ban on Hebrew and Yiddish books was rescinded after the Revolution of 1917. Many avant-garde artists (including Chagall, El Lissitzky and Natan Altman) illustrated Yiddish poetry, periodicals and children's books. This little pamphlet comprises two tales with child-like drawings of many of the same subjects Chagall explored in other work as early as 1910. "The woman symbolizes the death of the old order," observed the critic Chimen Abramsky, "and the rooster heralds in a new age" (Traditon and Revolution p. 61). "Der Nister" was the pseudonym of Pinhas Cohenovich, a Yiddish writer, philosopher, translator, critic, and a key figure in modernist literature in Kiev. In 1921, he left Russia and settled in Germany, where he published two collections of stories. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1927. His work was denounced as reactionary and his books (such as A Mayse mit a Hon, Dos Tsigele) were withdrawn. He was arrested in 1949 and died in a Soviet prison hospital in 1950. Apter-Gabriel 144; MoMA 146.

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