September 29, 2009

Russian Fairy Tales from A.A.

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

7 comments:

  1. Oh my gawd, those illustrations just get wilder and trippy-er as they go! Fantastic!

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  2. Besides the variety of shapes, and the marvellous use of color, those pictures gimme clues to better understand where the art of a guy like Paul Cox come from, what he saw and how he used it. It helps to make my own family tree.

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  3. Once again, you've managed to find some of the most unbelievably awesome yet obscure examples from the history of illustration. The Alexeieff post is just fantastic.

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  4. I’ve been collecting books illustrated by Alexeieff for many years and have managed to gather most of them. He has illustrated everything from Baudelaire to Poe. These books from the 1920-30’s are illustrated with his incredible original aquatints and are magnificent examples of French book printing. He is a great artist who is only slowly getting the recognition that he deserves. Collecting his books today is going to be difficult as his prices that were down to earth have gone into orbit.
    It should be noted that his first wife, Alexandra Grinenski, was also an accomplished artist and their work from this period is almost identical. She illustrated 3 books that are wonderful, which I also have, but are now hard to find. Who influence who is anyone’s guess.
    The pin screen that he developed with Clair Parker is interesting but too complicated to be anything more than a curiosity. He used it in to illustrate 2 books: “Dr. Zhivago” and “Notes from the underground.” In my opinion these are inferior compared with the inventive and stunning work from his earlier period.

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  5. Thanks for your kind comments.

    Atlas Gold, please email me -- ajourneyroundmyskull AT gmail.com -- I would love to talk to you more about your collection. Thank you for your informative comment!

    Will @ A Journey Round My Skull

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  6. OMG, you have outdone yourself yet again! You keep bringing beautiful things to my attention, thank you!

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  7. Will, you are a star! I keep returning to find ever more wondrous things. Thank you for opening so many doors into fabulous works of art.

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