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MAYAKOVSKY, Vladimir Vladimirovich (1893-1930) and Lazar Markovich ['El'] LISSITZKY (1890-1941, artist). Dlia Golosa. [For the Voice]. Moscow: Lutze & Vogt for the State Publishing House, 1923.

8° (187 x 131mm). Half-tone title printed in black and red and typography and illustrations printed in black and red, all after Lissitzky, leaves with fore-edges cut to form index tabs. Original printed orange wrappers after Lissitzky (wrappers lightly marked, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Genia Lubarsky (small signature on front blank).

FIRST EDITION. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND WELL-REALISED CONSTRUCTIVIST COLLABORATIONS. Lissitzky's 'most famous typographically functional book'; 'the cover is a superb example of Lissitsky's familiar system', but 'it is on the inner pages, and in particular, the opening page of each poem, that one discovers Lissitsky's extraordinary inventiveness... he invented bold red and black pictograms, mixing letters and abstract motifs, to visually project the exuberant and exclamatory nature of Mayakovsky's poems. Furthermore, since Mayakovsky's volume of poetry was meant for recitation, Lissitsky's invention of a thumb-tab index for ease in finding each poem epitomizes the notion of the book as functional object' (Rowell and Wye p.54). Hogben and Watson From Manet to Hockney 68; Johnson Artists' Books in the Modern Era 41; Rowell and Wye The Russian Avant-Garde Book 478.