Petrogradskie Okna ROSTA : katalog vystavki (Petrograd's ROSTA Windows : Exhibition Catalog)

Book condition: Near Fine. Creases across bottom outer corners of the cover, horizontal stress lines along the spine, coated stuff of the cover shows some yellowing to the spine and few small and light stains and fingerprints; internally fine. "ROSTA Windows" (named after the Russian Telegraph Agency that sponsored them) are the first Soviet propaganda posters created in 1919-1921 by most prominent Russian avant-garde artists. The posters were remarkable in their primitivism, laconism, brightness, where concepts conveyed mainly not through words but pictures. ROSTA Windows affiliates were in Moscow, Petrograd, Odessa, Kostroma, Kursk, Samara and other cities. 

Current exhibition held at the Leningdar’s State Russian Museum in 1968 was the first serious attempt to gather together and to show to the public extant Petrograd ROSTA Windows, which in contrast to V. Mayakovsky’s and M. Cheremnykh’s Moscow ones were been much less exproled. Advanced research on the subject was made by the art historian Aleksandra Vyacheslavovna Chistyakova, who also contributed to the preparation of a catalogue for the exhibition and one of the introductory articles. The author of another article and the main author of the exposition was Evgenii Fedorovich Kovtun, esteemed art historian and specialist of the Russian avant-garde, who prepared a number of exhibitions and catalogs dedicated to the Russian avant-garde. The exhibition was comprised of over hundred objects from the collections of State Russian Museum and M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library. On Petrograd's ROSTA Windows worked mainly artists Vladimir Kozlinsky, Vladimir Lebedev, Lev Brodaty, episodically contributed also Nikolai Radlov, Semen Pavlov, Aleksey Radakov. In the exhibits list objects grouped by artist with indication of title, technique of producing, size, ownership, number according to the catalog “Petrogradskie Okna ROSTA” (compiler A. Chistyakova, Leningrad, 1964). Also included full-page illustration reproducing Pavlov’s linocut of Lenin and four color illustration plates printed on raw brownish thick paper with reproductions of Lebedev’s and Kozlinsky’s posters (imitations of the originals).