Sale 2459 - Rare & Important Travel Posters, October 26, 2017

DESIGNER UNKNOWN 67 c ODESSA. Circa 1935. 30x19 3 / 4 inches, 76 1 / 4 x50 1 / 4 cm. Intourist, Moscow. Condition B+: repaired tears and creases in margins, some affecting image; repaired punch holes in top image and lower margin; horizontal fold in upper image; faded. Mounted on paper. An early Soviet Intourist poster combining a realistic landscape of the Odessa port and rail yards with very stylized typography. The Odessa Steps, which gained global notoriety after the famous scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s movie, “Battleship Potemkin,” were constructed between 1837 and 1841. Linking the famous seaport with the city itself, the steps are one of Odessa’s most famous landmarks. This is the English version (the only change in versions of different languages is the initials of the country, here USSR). Not in Intourist. [1,200/1,800] VERA MATVEEVNA LIVANOV (1910-1998) 68 c [LONG LIVE OUR NATIVE MOSCOW - OUR GLORY, OUR PRIDE!] 1947. 32 1 / 2 x21 1 / 2 inches, 82 1 / 2 x54 1 / 2 cm. Iskusstvo, Leningrad. Condition A-: minor creases and abrasions at edges; margins trimmed. Framed. Livanov was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. She studied under various Russian artistic mentors, including the studio of Tatiana Sukhotina-Tolstaya, a painter and the daughter of Leo Tolstoy. Livanov was commissioned by Intourist to design posters in the early 1930s, and went on to design theater and advertising posters for the all-union Chamber of Congress before eventually working with Izogiz on political posters through the 1960s. This poster, heralding the glory of the city of Moscow on its 800th anniversary, features the Spasskaya Tower (built in 1491) in the center. Some of the other buildings pictured are the Zavod Imeni Stalin (car factory), the Academy of Sciences, the Moscow City Council building and the State Library of the USSR. [700/1,000] 67 68