Children’s books of the Soviet avant-garde: read and draw

Date

Schedule

Saturdays, 13:00–14:30

Place

Garage Library

DESCRIPTION

Garage Library is launching a series of interactive workshops to explore Soviet children's books of 1920s–1930s.

This time is considered to be the golden age of Russian children’s books, a time when unprecedented experimenting with their design and contents took place. A number of distinguished avant-garde artists, such as Vera Ermolaeva and El Lissitzky, worked on creating books for kids. Discoveries that they made along the way had changed the way children's book were being perceived both in their homeland and worldwide. Thanks to reprinting, today readers can once again open and explore those books that are distinctive artifacts and witnesses of an era.

Throughout the workshops we are going to read the books together, study illustrations, and then strengthen learning results by creating new, ‘revolutionary’ and ‘avant-garde’ book designs.

ABOUT THE COURSE INSTRUCTORS

Olga Myaeots is an expert in children's book illustration, the head of the Children’s Book Center and children's programs at Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature, lecturer at the Department of Illustration and Print at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts (Moscow Polytechnic University), and an expert at library and literary competitions, including Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Masha Bazilevskaya is a designer and a graphic artist, an author of education programs for children at the State Tretyakov Gallery, SHUM school and children's camp in Nikola-Lenivets.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with advance registration

Schedule

Culture and Leisure Park

During our first-workshop we will become acquainted with Culture and Leisure Park (1930), a picture book by two famous artists, Valery Alfeevsky and Tatiana Lebedeva (Mavrina), and a true work of art. No wonder that original drawings for the book are currently kept in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Together with the authors we will travel in time and compare the park as it is today with the what it used to be like eighty-seven years ago. What changed? What was lost? What was created? Together we will draw our map of Gorky Park, supplement it with art objects of our own and also map a new route from the main entrance to Garage.

REGISTRATION

Date
Saturday, October 7
Time
13:00-14:30
Place
Garage Library

Dogs and A Lot of Wild Animals

There are so many games to engage in with dogs, but this time we are going to count them together with Vera Ermolaeva, a distinguished author of picture books for children. We will read two of her books, Dogs (1928) and A Lot of Wild Animals (1928), and will try to put ourselves into those animals’ skins. Together we will imagine and draw unique animals, including fantastic ones, and create a book of our own—a bestiary. Which animals will make it into that book is for you to decide!

REGISTRATION

Date
Saturday, October 14
Time
13:00-14:30
Place
Garage Library

The City Street and Argument between Houses

What was Moscow like a hundred years ago? We are going to take a walk through the city guided by two books by Soviet avant-garde artists, The City Street (Lev Zilov, Aleksandra Soborova, 1927) and Argument between Houses (Nikolay Agnivtsev, Nikolay Kupreyanov, 1925), and will try to find familiar places. And then, like true constructivist architects, we will imagine and construct a city out of paper, with its own schools, parks, shops, and high rises. 

REGISTRATION

Date
Saturday, November 18 
Time
13:00-14:30
Place
Garage Library

Who?

During our final workshop, every young ‘citizen’ will become part of an investigation to discover who hides behind mysterious silhouettes from the book Who? (1930) by Alexander Vvedensky. We are going to unravel the mystery, to read more poems by that famous author, and also get to know the mysterious silhouette technique that artist Lev Yudin used to illustrate the book. Along the way we will learn how silhouette became the language of revolutionary posters, and will wrap it all up by creating riddle-posters using various printing techniques.

REGISTRATION

Date
Saturday, December 2
Time
13:00-14:30
Place
Garage Library