Xenia Bogouslavskaia

(1892 - 1971)

2088

Ivan Puni

Сказки-минутки

Minute-tales

Berlin: Russkoe Tvorchestvo, [1922]

215 x 145 mm. 82 pages.

Edition: unknown

Pougny wrote his first children’s stories in 1916, when asked by Chukovskii, a well- known author of children’s books. In 1917 in For Children, a special publication of the Journal Niva, two of his stories were published with illustrations by his wife Xenia Bogouslavskaia. They also worked together on this book. The assumption that the stories and illustrations in Minute tales were done in 1916 for Niva (Puni exhibition, Basel 2003, p.17-18) does not appear to be correct, as only one of a total of 15 stories had previously been published in For Children No. 7. The illustrations are new and reveal a more modern approach, influenced by the artist’s involvement in Suprematism a few years earlier. The illustrations are humorous, caricature-like, with an occasional black square triangle or other form. They are close to Puni’s illustrations for his tale The Flying Dutchman, published in 1922. As none of the illustrations in Minute-tales is signed, it is impossible to tell the designs by Bogouslavskaia’s from those done by her husband Ivan Puni (Jean Pougny). It is also likely that the subtitle first series indicates the first section of the tales rather than the book. All of the five sections open with the author’s name and the word tales in bold type

References:

Pougny Paris 1993 pp. 23-24

Brussels 2005, nr. 87

Lemmens and Stommels 2009, p. 138