Pavel Filonov

(1883 - 1941)

669

Velimir Khlebnikov

Изборник стихов 1907-1914

Selected verses 1907-1914

Petrograd: EUY, 1914

204 x 150 mm. 48 + 16 pages

Edition: 1,000.

This small book is the second collection of poetry by Khlebnikov. The entire publication was supervised by Kruchenykh, as Khlebnikov was not an editor. In his obituary after Khlebnikov’s death in 1922, Maiakovskii wrote that the publishing of Khlebnikov’s poetry was the work of his friends, because if you gave a selection of verses to Khlebnikov, he would correct every word thus making a new poem. As Khlebnikov was a travelling man, who carried all his belongings with him in a single suitcase all over Russia, Kruchenykh took it upon himself to select and edit the anthology and to ask Filonov to design and illustrate the text of two of Khlebnikov’s poems, Perun and Night in Galicia. Filonov added eleven lithographed pages to the book that were printed on orange paper. He created for the text, ideograms that depict a whole word, or a whole idea in just one symbol. His illustrations show the fragmentation of plastic forms into small parts and repetitions of these parts. Eventually this would lead to Filonov’s analytical way of teaching and painting. The cover of the book shows a portrait of Khlebnikov that is (mostly) attributed to Nadezhda Burliuk, but appeared previously as an illustration by Maiakovskii in The prayer book of the three.

References:

Tarasenkov 1966, p. 391

Markov 1969, p. 193

Ex Libris 1974, nr. 101

Compton 1978, p. 24

Compton 1983, reprint

Bowlt 1984, pp. 35-36

Kovtun 1989, p. 164

Düsseldorf 1990, pp. 27-30

Gurianova, 1993, facsimile

Paris 1995, pp. 26-27

Getty 1997, nr. 307