Katherine DREIER

Modern Art.  Sesqui Centennial.  24 pp.  Illustrated with reproductions of works by Klee, Malevitch, Chagall, Kandinsky, Archipenko, etc.  4to., 265 x 221 cm, bound in publisher’s wrappers designed on both sides by Constantin Alajalov.  New York:  Societé Anonyme, 1926.

A catalogue published by Katherine Dreier’s Societé Anonyme with a striking typographic design by Constantin Alajalov.  Alajalov(1900-1987) was Russian born, however, from an Armenian family who immigrated to the United states in 1927.  Best known as an illustrator for the New Yorker and Saturday Evening Post, the present example strays into the Avant-Garde, more appropriate in relation to Dreier’s ‘experimental museum’.  Soon after, Alajalov was tapped—working in collaboration with Dreier—to design the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the monumental International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Brooklyn Museum later that year.  Some minor wear, a near fine copy. 

The Avant-Garde Applied, L135.  Gross, The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America p. 62.