Eye-catching 140, [9] pp. album full of pictographs, charts, diagrams, maps, photographs, and wood-engraved illustrations. Oblong quarto (9 3/8 x 13 1/2 inches). Original limp red cloth with embossed hammer and sickle to front cover. Some warping of wrappers, wear at base of spine, bumping to corners, spine slightly shaken, light toning, some scattered handwritten annotations and page numbers throughout, overall very good. Moscow: Scientific Publishing Institute of Pictorial Studies/Izostat, 1939.

This stunning album was one of a number of English-language publications issued in Russia to accompany the Soviet pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. The volume was edited by Ivan Sautin, Chief of the Central Board of National Economic Studies, and Ivan Ivanitsky, "Senior Scientific Collaborator" and the leading Soviet proponent of the ISOTYPE system of pictograms first developed in Vienna. Beginning in 1926, Constructivist designer Gerd Arntz (1900-1988) and Marxist philosopher and economist Otto Neurath (1882-1945) collaborated on the ISOTYPE method of pictorial statistics, originally called the "Vienna method". Arntz eventually designed approximately 4000 pictograms, and the method spread to the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. The goal of isotypes was to assemble and disseminate information and statistics through pictures. The main rule of isotypes was that a greater quantity should not be represented by a larger pictogram but instead by a greater number of pictograms. Visualizing the data and de-emphasizing the use of exact numbers helped the information stay more easily with the viewer. Utilizing this new method, data could be communicated simply to newly literate or illiterate audiences.

Following the establishment of this method in Vienna, the Institute of Pictorial Studies was founded in the Soviet Union in 1931. Artnz visited the Soviet Union regularly, and helped educated the designers, linocutters, and statisticians working at the institute. He also met with El Lissitzky, who oversaw the design of this album and who worked on various projects with Izostat between 1931 and 1940. Lissitzky worked together with Alexander Grigorovich and Mikhail Nikolaev to attempt to showcase clearly the modernization of the USSR, its technological advancements, and superior social programs. The album is divided into four sections: "State Organization of the U.S.S.R.", "Economic Construction in the U.S.S.R.", "Welfare and Culture in the U.S.S.R.", and "Position of Women in the U.S.S.R.", with an addendum titled "Moscow - Capital of the U.S.S.R." The pages are bursting with colorful compositions, layering Lissitzky's masterful designs with an incredible amount of real, statistical information.

Some of the charts and diagrams depict things such as the scheme of elections to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., national composition of the Soviet of nationalities, the coal and oil mining industries, mechanization of labor processes and the development of labor productivity in industry, production of agricultural machinery, production of granulated sugar, collectivization of peasants' farms, harvest yield of principal technical crops, railway transport, air traffic, class composition of the population, average annual wages, labor and reas of a peasant woman vs a housewife, sanatoriums and rest homes, number and size of libraries, new housing construction, students in general education schools, higher educational institutions, participation of women in political life, women in the fields of education, engineering, science, and medicine, and beds for childbirth cases in hospitals.

(Karasik, p. 258).

Book ID: 53657

Price: $9,500.00