Soviet Aviation

Soviet Aviation. State Art Publishers, 1939 in original full cloth, with lettering and design on the front cover and spine. Illustrated endpapers. Soiled boards, but internally clean with minor page toning, appropriate to the issue date. First and only edition. Illustrated throughout with photomontages and photographs by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. The title page features an image of a five-pointed star against the sky and this is a collage of a single airplane repeated 85 times. Less elaborate patterns were formed in real life by airplanes during flypasts: they often performed the name of Stalin or the USSR in the sky. The album consists of full- and half-page photographs and montages: the first Soviet machines of the early 1920s and contemporary aircrafts, Arctic flights, military aviation, numerous portraits of pilots, constructors, parachute jumpers - and records they broke. The pictures were compared with film stills and Hollywood advertisements. This parade edition was a part of a triumphal image created for the Soviet Pavilion at the 1939 New York World s Fair. The Soviet Union was hardly prepared for the upcoming war but needed to express itself. The album Soviet Aviation showcased that the USSR had the modernized air force and might counterattack. This book is from the Nathaniel Tarn Collection.…