El Lissitzky – Complete Copy of the Lithographic Series "Had Gadya", with Original Dust Jacket – Published by ...

El Lissitzky – Complete Copy of the Lithographic Series "Had Gadya", with Original Dust Jacket – Published by Kultur Lige, Kiev, 1919

"Had Gadya, getseykhent un litografiert Eliezer Lissitzky" [One Little Goat (or: The Only Kid), drawn and lithographed by Eliezer Lissitzky]. Kiev: Kultur Liege (Y. Bentzionovsky lithographic press), 1919. Yiddish and Aramaic.
A complete copy of "Had Gadya, " the most significant and best known of Jewish works by El Lissitzky. 11 color lithographs (title page, and one illustration for each of the ten verses of the liturgical song), and a dedication page, along with the original, three-paneled dust jacket. "Had Gadya" was printed in 75 copies, most of which are believed to have been destroyed or lost during the Stalin era. Of the few that did survive in their entirety, only a handful of copies are known to still have their original paper covers.

El (Eliezer Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky (1890-1941), Russian Jewish artist, designer, photographer, educator, typographer, and architect, among the most prominent and influential leaders of the Russian Avant-Garde movement. An architect by training, Lissitzky, along with his mentor and friend Kazimir Malevich, greatly contributed to the formation and development of the Suprematist movement, which advanced a geometric form of abstract art. His was responsible for the design of numerous books and periodicals, as well as exhibitions and propaganda material on behalf of Russia's Communist regime, and he exerted considerable influence on Europe's Bauhaus and Constructivist movements. Early in his career, Lissitzky expressed a keen interest in Jewish culture, and Jewish motifs were integrated into many of his works. In this vein, in 1915-16 he took part in Sh. An-ski's ethnographic expedition into the Pale of Jewish Settlement. With the outbreak of the October (Bolshevik) Revolution, Lissitzky came to be wholeheartedly identified with the Communist cause. In the interest of advancing Jewish culture in Russia in the aftermath of the Revolution, he devoted much of his creative energy, among other things, to designing and illustrating Yiddish children's books, and a number of his published children's books were regarded as pioneering masterpieces of graphic design and typography. Nevertheless, several years later he largely abandoned Jewish subject matter and embarked instead on the development of a more abstract and universal artistic language. The resulting style found its keenest expression in a series of abstract, geometric paintings, drawings and prints he created in the years 1919-27, to which he gave the name "Proun."
Lissitzky's illustrations to the piyut "Had Gadya, " sung at the close of the Passover seder ceremony, represent an interesting phase in his artistic journey, in which his work was characterized by a unique combination of his old adherence to traditional Jewish motifs, and the earliest sparks of his new devotion to the abstract style (best exemplified by the Constructivist design of the work's cover). Following the publication of "Had Gadya, " Lissitzky turned away almost entirely from Jewish subjects.
Lissitzky produced the first version of his "Had Gadya" series of illustrations in 1917. The original watercolor drawings are kept in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery. In 1919 he created a new and somewhat different version, which is today part of the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The present series of color lithographs, printed in Kiev that same year, is based on this latter version.
The "Had Gadya" series includes ten lithographed illustrations – one for each of the ten verses of the song. Each illustration is crowned with an architectural frame containing the Yiddish verse. The opening words of the original Aramaic verse appear in the bottom. Decorative Hebrew letters in the upper corners mark the progression of the pages. These ten lithographs are accompanied by a color lithographed title page, showing a young boy with a baby goat, and a page with a printed dedication, which Lissitzky signed with the Hebrew initials "Aleph Lamed, " and dated February 6, 1919. The dedication reads "Far Polyen" ("To Polyen" – perhaps the Russian Jewish artist Polina Chentova).
The three-paneled dust jacket is printed on both sides. All ten verses of the song are printed on the inside, with the words "das tzigele" (the kid) cascading down the columns of text, on an abstract background composed of geometric forms. The exterior of the jacket bears the title and the emblem of "Kultur Lige."
The "Had Gadya" series of lithographs stimulated extensive commentary in academic articles and in the professional literature (see below). What stands out in this work, among other things, is Lissitzky's use of Communist imagery in an effort to present the Revolution as the dawning of the redemption. Thus, for instance, in the illustration to verse 9 – "And then came the Angel of Death" – the Angel of Death is depicted wearing a Tsarist crown; and in the illustration to verse 10 – "And then came the Holy One, Blessed be He, and slew the Angel of Death" – the angel is depicted spread out on the ground, while above him is a hand grasping a sword, symbolizing the Russian people holding up the sword of the Revolution (the image of an outstretched hand grasping a sword appeared on a Soviet stamp of that time). These lithographs are also an early example of Lissitzky's integration of image and text – a signature feature of his works. Here Lissitzky created a system of color coding: the characters are given colors that correspond to the colors of the words representing them, and when the color of a particular character changes, so does the color of its corresponding word in the text. For instance, in the illustration to verse 7, both the ox and the corresponding Yiddish word "oks" are red, and in the illustration to verse 8 they are both yellow.
"Had Gadya" was published under the auspices of the Kultur Liege organization. Kultur Lige was founded in Kiev shortly after the October Revolution, with the goal of promoting Yiddish literature, theater, and culture. Among its members were the greatest of Jewish artists of the time, including El Lissitzky, Peretz Markish, Sholem Asch, Dovid Hofshteyn, Israel Joshua Singer, Issachar Ber Ryback, Joseph Chaikov, and others. In the years of its existence, Kultur Lige published many of the finest Yiddish works of the twentieth century – children's books, books of poetry, and periodicals – illustrated and designed by some of the most noteworthy Jewish artists, illustrators, and graphic designers of Eastern Europe. "Had Gadya" represents one of the most outstanding works published by Kultur Lige.

[12] loose leaves, 25.5X27.5 cm. Good condition. Marginal stains to title page. Minor marginal stains to several other leaves. Minor blemishes and tears, most professionally repaired. Housed in elegant case, new.
Cover (when opened): approx. 70X29 cm. Fair condition. Minor stains and creases. Tears (including open tears) to edges and to fold lines, repaired.

Rare item. Only few copies offered for sale at auctions over the years.

Reference:
• Arnold J. Band, ed., Had Gadya, The Only Kid, Facsimile of El Lissitzky's Edition of 1919 (with introduction by Nancy Perloff). Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2004.
• Alexander Kantsedikas, El Lissitzky: The Jewish Period, 1905 – 1923. London: Unicorn, 2017.
• Haia Friedberg, Lissitzky's Had Gadia, in: Jewish Art, Vol. 12-13 (1987), pp. 294-303.
• Igor Dukhan, El Lissitzky – Jewish as Universal: From Jewish Style to Pangeometry, in: Ars Judaica, the Bar-Ilan Journal of Jewish Art, Vol. 3 (2007), pp. 53-72.
See also:
• Ruth Apter-Gabriel, curator and ed., Tradition and Revolution, The Jewish Renaissance in Russian Avant-Garde Art, 1912-1928, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1987, no. 90.
• Nina Gurianova et al., The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910-1934, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002, no. 231.
The present copy has appeared at a number of different exhibitions, including:
• Genosse.Jude.: Wir wollten nur das Paradies auf Erden (Comrade Jew. We Only Wanted Paradise on Earth), The Jewish Museum, Vienna, 2017. See exhibition catalog, pp. 236-37.
• Kodesh, Omanut, Estetika, The Mané-Katz Museum, Haifa, 2011. See exhibition catalog, p. 10. Hebrew.
• Die verborgene Spur: Jüdische Wege durch die Moderne (The Hidden Trace: Jewish Paths through Modernity), Felix Nussbaum Haus, Osnabrück, Germany, 2008-2009. See exhibition catalog, pp. 116-17.

Provenance: The Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv, 110.011.015.