Industriia sotsializma: Tyazhelaya Promyshlennost'k VII Vsesoiuznomu S'ezdy Sovetov. [Socialist Industry: Heavy Industry for the Seventh Congress of Soviets].

1935. El LISSITZKY. Industriia sotsializma: Tyazhelaya Promyshlennost'k VII Vsesoiuznomu S'ezdy Sovetov. [Socialist Industry: Heavy Industry for the Seventh Congress of Soviets]. Text by A.M. Litvak. 7 parts. Parts 1-6 unpaginated, illustrated throughout with photomontages, diagrams, overlays, foldouts, die cuts, a tipped in cloth sample and many other design elements. Part 7 is a folder that contains two large folding maps and a manual of descriptive text. Folio, 365 x 275 mm., 6 parts in original embossed wrappers, part 7 in original printed folder all contained in the publisher's drop-back box, with a photograph by Anatoly Skurikhin surrounded by a faux riveted border, that is repeated down the spine, in a new cloth folding box. Moscow: IZOGIZ, 1935. An unusually fine copy of a work generally considered to be one of the masterpieces designed by Lissitzky, and the most spectacular and rarest of the Soviet photobooks. The book was published to accompany the first All-Union art exhibition, a celebration of the achievements of Socialist industrialization, intended originally to open in 1937 to commemorate the second Soviet Five Year Plan and the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution but delayed by two years. The resulting book '...is a cornucopia of graphic design and photomontage, arguable the high point both of Lissitsky's book designing career and of the Soviet propaganda photobook...' (Parr & Badger). In exceptionally fine condition for a book rarely found thus. Karasik, The Soviet Photobook 1920-1940, p.214-223. Parr, The Photobook , vol. I, pp. 160-3. Roth, The Book of 101 Books, pp. 82-85.