Synthèse du costume théâtral.

rare album with 33 art deco costume designs

Rare album of striking colourful designs by the Cubist and Art Deco Ukrainian artist, Serge Gladky (Serhii Hladky), in the original wrappers. We could trace only two copies in public institutions, at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library and Stanford.

Serge Gladky's biography is rather vague. Born in the 1880s in the Poltava region of Ukraine, he studied in St Petersburg and in 1924-26 published the magazine 'Umeni Slovanu' ['Slavic Art'] whilst based in Czechoslovakia. From 1924, he lived in France where he became a prominent figure in the Art Deco movement as a designer and graphic artist. During or just before World War II, he returned to Ukraine and thereafter his fate is unknown. According to some sources, he was sent to the Gulag in 1945 for 'anti-Soviet activities' and died in the far North in 1952.

Gladky published his works using the pochoir (stencil) technique popular in France at the time, employing ornamental and geometric patterns often inspired by nature and animals. Such colourful pochoir prints had to be produced in a limited number of copies in order to maintain the brightness of colour. The present edition, for instance, had only 170 copies (the present one is no. 11) with 30 full-page dynamic designs by the artist, taken from theatre and dance – at a time when the Ballets Russes was an established and recognised innovation force.

The album's preface is by the poet, novelist and art critic André Salmon (1881-1969) who, together with his close friends Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, was one of the early proponents of Cubism. Salmon calls Gladky's plates 'inventions merveilles, miraculeuses', praising the artist's ability to capture the essence of Russian culture through geometric forms: 'Oh! je sais; la révolution cubiste de 1906 a facilité la tâche de M. Serge Gladky. Sachant de ce cubisme tout ce qu'on peut en connaître, j'admire d'autant plus l'artiste russe d'en avoir su recevoir tout ce qui lui permet de recréer, dans le temps et l'espace, dans l'heure et dans l'éternel, sa lointaine patrie, composant des costumes qui sont autant d'absolus décoratifs'.

First edition, no. 11 of 170 numbered copies; 4to (33.5 x 25.5 cm); 33 pochoir plates (including frontispiece), some with gold or silver, on laid paper, some light foxing to a few plates; original colour wrappers, very minor staining to wrappers, otherwise a very good copy.