Four original illustrations of Krylov's Fables.

The book of 'Krylov's Fables' for which the four illustrations were created was published by OGIZ in Moscow, 1947, and were illustrated by twenty prominent Soviet illustrators, Altman among them.
The four original illustrations are of the following fables:
1. The Pig Under the Oak Tree
2. The Cat and the Nightingale
3. The Fox and the Crow
4. The Fox and the Grapes

Nathan Isaevich Altman (1889-1970) was a Ukranian-Jewish artist, who worked in France and the Soviet Union and France.
He was born to a family of Jewish merchants in 1889 and studied art and sculpture in Odesa between 1902 and 1907 before moving to Paris in 1910. Shortly after he returned to Russia, joined Souiz Molodezhi and painted his famous Cubist portrait of Akhmatova. After the Revolution he focused more on theatre design, producing sets for the Jewish theatre in Moscow for eight years before moving to Paris yet again in 1928. Altman returned to Russia in 1936 and settled in Leningrad. He was considered 'an undesirable' artist due to the Communist party's preference of 'Social Realism', and hence had to make a living as a graphic designer, book illustrator and stage designer.

Four pen and ink illustrations on thick white card (32.8 x 25 cm), titled on margins in pencil in Russian and signed in initials and dated in ink inside each drawing.