Uzbekskaia SSR na vsesoiuznoy selskohoziaistvennoy vystavke 1939 goda. [i.e. Uzbek Soviet Republic on the All-Union Agrarian Exhibition of 1939].

Notes

First and only edition, one of 4000 copies, but fragile. Uncommon, just 6 copies traced on OCLC, all in the United States. A celebration of the Uzbek contribution to the Agrarian Exhibition that opened in 1939 at the VDNKh - The Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy - in Moscow and ran till 1941. It had originally been intended as a three-month show, but was so successful that it was extended, eventually only being closed due to retrenchments in the wartime economy. The various republics were represented by carefully planned pavilions, drawing on local design elements, while stressing the advances made under communism. In 1958 the show was recreated as a permanent exhibition, the Uzbekistan pavilion being based on the original design, the ornate gazebo of which is featured on the front board of this book. The pavilion remains one of the cultural centres for Uzbek presence in Moscow. The book is broadly dedicated to agriculture in Uzbekistan as a whole, rather than solely to the contents of the exhibition, leading the reader through the typical produce of the region, cotton, silk, wine. Designed by Evgeny Isaakovich Kogan (1906-1983), a Ukrainian graduate of VKhUTEIN - Vysshiye Khudozhestvenno-Tekhnicheskii Institut the Higher Art and Technical Institute Lenin's workshops intended "to prepare master artists of the highest qualifications for industry, and builders and managers for professional-technical education". Kogan was trained in the book arts by the renowned book designer and illustrator Dmitry Mitrohin and Vladimir Favorsky, sometime rector of the institute. Kogan is probably best known for his work as an illustrator. An unusual survival, the heavy boards and wire-stitched construction of which, mean that this highly attractive contribution to the documentation of an important exhibition is rarely encountered either commercially or institutionally.