Artists’ books. Book collection

This selection brings together publications on the history of the artist’s book and low-circulation zines, their theory and creation practices.

Photo: Vadim Shtein

In the spring of 2025, the GES-2 Library hosted the Artist’s Book Lab, where participants had the opportunity to create their own artbooks. The topics and tasks of the public programme are also reflected in the books included in the Library’s collection.

Encyclopaedic editions on the livre d’artiste—an artist’s book movement at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—document the collaborative history between authors and publishers. Particularly important publications include Il`yazd. XX vek Il`i Zdanevicha [Iliazd. The 20th century of Ilya Zdanevich] (in Russian) about a prominent publisher and poet of the Russian avant-garde and Surrealism and Livre d’Artiste (in Russian) about the works of Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and other surrealists in the livre d’artiste genre. The collection also includes editions once held in the personal library of renowned art historian and former director of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Irina Antonova: Pablo Pikasso. Xudozhnik i kniga [Pablo Picasso. Artist and Book] (in Russian) and Anri Matiss: iskusstvo knigi [Henri Matisse: The Art of the Book] (in Russian). Additionally, the catalogues Livre d’Artiste [Livre d’Artiste] (in Russian) and Paroles Peintes [Paroles Peintes] (“picturesque words”, in Russian) reflect the impressive collection of Mark Bashmakov, a collector of livre d’artiste and one of the initiators of the permanent exhibition The Cabinet of the Artist’s Book in the Hermitage Museum.

The story of the early twentieth-century avant-garde experiments continues with the catalogue Avangard i tradiciya: knigi russkix xudozhnikov XX veka [Avant-garde and Tradition: Books by Russian Artists of the 20th Century] (in Russian)—on small-circulation futurist book publications and a collection of articles Historic Avant-Garde Work on Paper about avant-garde artists’ paper-working methods. The theory is supplemented by a reprint edition that recreates the 1910 almanac Studiya impressionistov [The Studio of the Impressionists] (in Russian) edited by the artist Nikolai Kulbin with texts by the poets David and Nikolai Burliuk and the critic Nikolai Evreinov.

The book E`nciklopediya Knigi xudozhnika [Encyclopedia of the Artist’s Book] (in Russian) explores the history of the artist’s book as an art form and is edited by the movement’s theorists and practitioners, Mikhail Pogarsky and Viktor Loukin. The publication features biographies of Russian avant-garde artists, authors of livres d’artistes, experimentalists of the second half of the twentieth century, and contemporary Russian book artists. Alongside descriptions of their works, it examines the genre’s intersections with contemporary art practices. Works by Russian artists can also be viewed in the catalogues Muzej “Kniga xudozhnika” [The Artist’s Book Museum] (in Russian) and Kniga xudozhnika 1970 — 1990-e gody` [The Artist’s Book. 1970—1990s] (in Russian), which present a broad selection of pieces by both Russian and international masters.

Contemporary book art practices can be explored through self-published editions. Artist Leonid Tishkov, who took part in one of the lectures of the Artist’s Book Lab series, donated a copy of Sushhestva vozduxa [Air Creatures] (in Russian) to the Library’s collection. The book, created in collaboration with Andrey Suzdalev, is the final form of a performance project whose central idea was to animate polyethylene through the movement of the wind.

A book can serve as the catalyst for the formation of an artistic collective. For example, artists Arkady Nasonov and Dmitry Ligeiros, who participated in the Cloud Storage exhibition at GES-2 in 2023, decided to name their art group “Cloud Commission” after discovering Rukovodstvo dlya opredeleniya oblachny`x form [A Guide for Determining Cloud Forms] (in Russian) published in 1930 by the organisation of the same name. The idea of ​​​​a celestial bureaucratic office inspired the artists to create several works in the genre of an artist’s book: Moi budushhie fil`my` [My Future Films] (in Russian), Antipody` [Antipodes] (in Russian), and others.

The Swiss project Collection Cahiers d’Artistes publishes a series of small-format artist’s books by contemporary artists every two years, each accompanied by essays from art theorists. The Library’s collection includes similar “artists’ notebooks” from 2017, 2019, and 2021, published as part of the Art Platform for the Promotion of Ural Contemporary Art project. At that time, Russian authors, under the curatorship of Zhenya Chaika, created works as an homage to their Swiss colleagues. This is how Keyword Search by Alexander Bazhenov, The Joy of Recognizing by Lyudmila Kalinichenko, and Don’t Even Think About by Tima Radi appeared.

Zines offer yet another mode of artistic expression in the form of a book. These are small-circulation publications, in part, heirs to both the artist’s book tradition and samizdat magazines, such as Tret`ya modernizaciya [Third Modernisation] (in Russian). Typically, authors illustrate, layout, and publish zines themselves. The Library’s collection includes both Russian and foreign publications. Among them are the photo book Still by artist Kasia Klimpel, a collection of booklets depicting sunsets and sunrises, and the visual diary of photographer Anatoly Suzdaltsev documenting life in the southwestern district of Almaty, Na orbite [In Orbit] (in Russian). Valeria Kruglova’s Beetlemania zine explores how we view bark beetles (or how they view us). Among the text zines included in the collection are the poetic brochure Masterskaya odnokadrovogo fil`ma [One-Frame Film Workshop] (in Russian) by director Artur Aristakisyan, and the playful manual Vvedenie v professiyu. XXI vek [Introduction to the Profession. XXI Century] (in Russian) by Alexandra Novozhenova and Anastasia Ryabova.

Through regular public programmes, GES-2 House of Culture facilitates collaborative zine-making projects with its participants. Thus, Latest Film Theories workshop released a film studies zine called Beskonechny`j mir idej [The Endless World of Ideas] (in Russian), and Writers’ Workshop for Country Life and Nature Lovers project released Kak ya zdes` okazalas` [How I Ended Up Here] (in Russian) about the flora of country gardens. Students of Extraordinary Prose created Neoby`chnaya proza [The Extraordinary Prose] (in Russian)—a zine about artistic writing. The resulting texts from the On My Own workshop series were compiled into a publication Ya sama [On My Own] (in Russian) addressing care, and participants in one of the reading groups who studied photography theory stitched together a zine titled Praktika obraza [The Practice of the Image] (in Russian) during their last class.