Details
41o

Aleksei Kruchenyll, Samipismo, Tiflis, 1918

hectographs printed in purple and hand-written carbon-copied text in dark blue, 1918, on thin buff wove paper, rare, good impression, eleven pages of text and designs (including cover), the full sheets as published, in excellent condition, in thin wove paper cover with artist's name and title on front, the whole in very good condition
overall S. 162 x 112mm.(album)

Lot Essay

The rarest 41o books are those which Kruchenykh produced by hand-operated hectographic press. The process itself is self-limiting because not only a restricted number of impressions can be printed from the same matrix before it begins to break down. This necessitates that either the editions are limited to as few as fifteen to twenty-five copies or a second matrix must be made.

Samipismo is a collection of zaum (transitional) poems of the purest form by Kruchenykh. The words of the poems are interspersed with rayonist designs and its letters are set at such peculiar angles to each other that they appear to tumble off the page. Some pages are of carbon printed manuscript or rubber-stamped text, suggesting that only a few examples can have been produced.

Printed on the most fragile selection of papers, the current copy survives in very good condition

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