Ėlektropoėma
Apr 22nd, 2008 by houghtonmodern
Mikhail Gerasimov (1889-1939) was one of the most popular Russian writers of the early twentieth century. A member of the working class, Gerasimov joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1907, and published work extensively in Bolshevik journals. (He became disillusioned with the Party and left it in 1921.) He was also a leader in Proletkult, a Russian movement to promote the proletariat and suppress bourgeois elements in art.
Gerasimov’s work often focuses on modernist topics, such as the melding of the industrial and artificial with the natural. Rather than denounce the new industrial age, Gerasimov seems to have wanted to reconcile both a simpler past and a progressive present.
Ėlektropoėma is a collection of Gerasimov’s poems published in Moscow in 1923. The work is bound in a colorful, decorative cloth:
The title page is characteristic of Russian avant-garde book design, which often included the use of red and black angular designs:
*RC9.G3125.923e. Purchased with the Bayard L. Kilgour, Jr. Fund for Russian Belles Lettres. Images may not be reproduced without permission.
