Item #50411 Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]. Helena Bochorakova-Dittrichova.
Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]
Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]
Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]
Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]

Dojmy z SSSR [Impressions of the USSR]

Brno: Exod, [1935]. First pocket edition. Paperback. 136pp. Sextodecimo in wraps. Short tear to spine at top, 1/2" tear to front hinge at foot creasing to rear wrap and to front wrap corners; interior is clean and tight. Illustrated with 9 drawings by the author. Item #50411

The nine pen-and-ink drawings illustrating this book do not appear in the first edition. The text appears to have been printed from the same type as the third edition, although it does not follow the same pagination.

An illustrated account of the author's travels to Leningrad, St. Petersburg, Moskow, Kharkiv, and Kiev. Bochorakova-Dittrichova also devotes a chapter each to a collective farm and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station.

Helena Bochorakova-Dittrichova (1894-1980) was the first female wordless novelist and the only woman to work in this medium during its heyday. She was born in the Moravian region of what is now the Czech Republic and spent most of her life in Brno, the Moravian capital. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and in 1923 received a government scholarship to study printmaking in Paris. Bochorakova-Dittrichova's unpublished wordless novel Malí ka Na Cestách [The Artist on Her Journey] recounts this period in her life. In Paris, she first encountered the wordless novels of Flemish artist Frans Masereel, the originator of the form, and was inspired to create her own. Over the course of her long career, Bochorakova-Dittrichova published several wordless novels, along with travelogues and historical works. She also worked as a printmaker and illustrator, and was highly regarded in her native land, though largely unknown elsewhere. This changed in 2014, when the National Museum of Women in the Arts held an exhibition of her work entitled "The First Woman Graphic Novelist: Helena Bochorakova-Dittrichova," and this important artist finally began to gain global recognition. Her work, however, is still not widely available.

Price: $850.00

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