ILIAZD (Ilia Zdanevitch, known as). Ledentu le Phare. Paris, - Lot 117

ILIAZD (Ilia Zdanevitch, known as). Ledentu le Phare. Paris, Degré 41, 1923. In-8 (19.5 x 14.5 cm), 61 pp. paperback, front cover illustrated with original collage. First edition of this poem in zaum ("transmental" language creation, a Russian form of literary Dadaism), dedicated to the Russian painter Michel Ledentu following his accidental death in 1917. Cover illustrated with a color collage by Naoum GRANOVSKI, hand-executed on each copy by the latter. Superb typography and layout by ILIAZD. Edition announced at 530 numbered copies; no. 11 of 500 on Rubel paper. As the cover collage was made to order and demand was low, only a little over a hundred copies were actually assembled, the rest of the edition having been destroyed. Printed by Imprimerie Union. The separate 8 pp. booklet (preface by Ribemont-Dessaignes) that sometimes accompanies the work is absent here. Spine partly detached, otherwise a very good uncut copy of this work which "marks both the culmination of transrational poetic utopia and that of Futurist typographic experiments, a kind of acme of the Russian avant-garde in its most abstract form". (Régis Gayraud, foreword to the reproduction published in 1995 (Paris, Allia)).