In:Children's Literature and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 5] 2015
► pp. 137–170
Chapter 6. The 1929 Amsterdam exhibition of early Soviet children’s picturebooks
A reconstruction
Published online: 29 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.07sto
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.5.07sto
This chapter presents an evidence-based reconstruction of the exhibition of Soviet-illustrated children’s books held in Amsterdam in April-May 1929. The children’s books on show were identified using contemporary sources, leading to a qualitative analysis that lists the books and their titles, illustrators, and prices, which indicate the books’ sizes. A quantitative statistical analysis of the books on show demonstrates an overrepresentation of the new Soviet picturebook, indicating that the importance of this special kind of children’s book was acknowledged by its contemporaries, as indeed is shown in the reception of the exhibition at that time.
References (60)
Primary Sources
Afanasev, Aleksandr. [1929]. Dieren in den Winter. Illus. Nikolai Kupreianov. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
Engel, Rashel. [1929]. De gouden blaren. Illus. Sofia Vishnevetskaia & Elena Fradkina. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
Gurian, Olga. [1929]. Het vroolijke onweer. Illus. Boris Pokrovsky. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
. 1930. Ben ik ‘t nou of ben ik ‘t niet? Illus. Vladimir Konashevich. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
Russische Prentenboeken. Derde serie. IJsco – Circus. [1931]. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
Russische Prentenboeken. Eerste serie. De Gouden Blaren – Het Vroolijke Onweer – Dieren in den Winter. [1929]. The Hague: De Baanbreker/N.V. Servire.
Secondary Sources
Balina, Marina. 2008. Creativity through Restraint: The Beginning of Soviet Children’s Literature. In Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, Marina Balina & Larissa Rudova (eds), 1-17. London: Routledge.
Brooklyn Museum. 1926. Foreword. In Art for Children as Shown by Modern European Picture Books. Catalogue. Brooklyn, NY: The Brooklyn Museum.
Cendrars, Blaise. 1997. Le livre d’enfant en URSS. In Livres d’enfants russes et soviétiques (1917-1945), Françoise Lévèque & Serge Plantureux (eds), IV-V. Paris: Agence Culturelle de Paris.
de Bodt, Saskia 2014. De verbeelders. Nederlandse boekillustratie in de twintigste eeuw. Nijmegen: Vantilt.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1970. The Commissariat of Enlightenment. Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunacharsky. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1992. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gooderham, Peter. 1982. The Komsomol and the Worker Youth: The Inculcation of ‘Communist Values’ in Leningrad during NEP. Soviet Studies XXXIV, No. 4 (October 1982): 506-528.
Fox, Michael S. 1992. Censorship and the Problem of Party Policy in Cultural Affairs 1922-28. Soviet Studies XLIV, No. 6: 1045-1068.
Hellman, Ben. 2008. Samuil Marshak: Yesterday and Today. In Russian Children’s Literature and Culture, Marina Balina & Larissa Rudova (eds), 217-239. London: Routledge.
Hirsch, Francine. 2003. Getting to Know “The Peoples of the USSR”: Ethnographic Exhibits as Soviet Virtual Tourism, 1923-1932. Slavic Review 62.4. Special Issue on Tourism and Travel in Russia and the Soviet Union (Winter 2003): 683-709.
Immel, Andrea. 2002. The Anna Bakhst Benjamin Family Collection of Raduga Books in the Cotsen’s Children’s Library. Princeton Library Publications: 343-356.
Lemmens, Albert & Stommels, Serge. 2009. Russian Artists and the Children’s Book 1890-1992, Nijmegen: LS.
Maguire, Robert A. 1987. Red Virgin Soil. Soviet Literature in the 1920’s. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.
Michielsen, Béatrice. 2010. Perspective on an Exhibition. In Promessas de Futuro. Blaise Cendrars y el libro para niños en la URSS / 1926-1929. Malaga: Museo Picasso.
Olich, Jacqueline. 2009. Competing Ideologies and Children’s Literature in Russia, 1918-1935. Zweibrücken: VDM Verlag.
Prins Willekes-Macdonald, Ina Elisa. 1929a. Russische kinderboeken in Nederland. Nieuw Rusland. Orgaan van het genootschap Nederland-Nieuw Rusland. No. 1.3 (May-June 1929): 9-13.
. 1929b. Russische kinderboeken. De vrouw en haar huis. Geïllustreerd maandschrift 24.7 (November 1929): 337-339.
Russische Ausstellung. Buchgewerbe, Graphik, Theater, Photographie. 1929. Exhibition catalogue. Zurich: Kunstgewerbemuseum.
Ruud, Charles A. 1990. Russian Entrepreneur. Publisher Ivan Sytin of Moscow 1851-1934. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Tarasenkov, Anatoly. 1966. Russkie poety XX veka 1900-1955. Bibliografiia, Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel.
Teekman, Juliette. 2009. ‘Een merkwaardige tentoonstelling’. Kinderboeken en grafiek uit de Sovjet-Unie in het Stedelijk Museum. In Revolutionaire confrontaties. Het beeld van de Italiaanse en Russische avant-garde in Nederland, 1913-1933, compiled by Lieske Tibbe, 61-65. Nijmegen: Radboud Universiteit.
