Sobstvennije istorii i risunki detej [Children's own stories and drawings ]

Children's own stories and drawings / collected by A. Kruchenykh. EUY, 1914. 48 p.: 15 illustrations. 33,5 × 18,3 cm. In publisher's wrappers. Uncut block, leaves of different sizes. Small tears in covers, pages are clean. Good condition of the copy.

The collection consists of two parts: the lithographed drawings and the text.
The latter is printed on heavy green paper and is entitled "Poems, Stories, Fairy Tales". The two largest texts, by Zina V. (age 11) and Tanya (age 7), are subtitled "Recorded from Dictation" and "Recorded from Memory".
Lithographs in pencil on thin, light pink paper are printed on one side of the sheets: 15 drawings and 1 sheet of lithographed text (16 lithographs in total). All drawings (except one) are perpendicular to the binding. Drawn by: N. Kulbina, M. Ehrlich and P. Bakharev.
Alexei Kruchenykh is one of the key figures of Russian literature, the "enfant terrible" of Russian Futurism, the "Futurist Jesuit of the word", and perhaps the most consistent figure of the Russian avant-garde in his radical aspirations.
Throughout his life, Kruchenykh lived as a bachelor and treated children with cautious curiosity. At the same time, Alexei Kruchenykh's interest in children's art is well known, as is the interest of avant-garde artists in general in dilettantism, the 'naive', the 'primitive' in art, for example in the Russian lubok. The most famous of Kruchenykh's editions, with illustrations by Rozanova, Larionov and Burliuk, have obvious overlaps with the "Children's Drawings" edition, both in typographical technique and in the style of the drawings. As contemporary scholars of Kruchenykh's work point out, his strategy was to confuse the reader by blurring the boundary between children's and adult texts, thus affirming the affinity of Futurist abstruseness with children's language, as well as the affinity of children's drawings with those of the avant-gardists.
Rare first edition in good condition.