Russian Art & Literature - Bloomsbury Auctions

Lot 46. KUZMIN. Mikhail Alekseevich (1872-1936) and Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevskii (1893-1976).
Zanaveshennye kartinki [Curtained pictures].Amsterdam [Petersburg]: [Petropolis], 1920. Illustrated by Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevskii.
Out of series copy from an edition of 307. 34 pp., 8vo (250 x 205 mm). Original decorated gray wrappers. Condition: wrappers rebacked
and some soiling of pages.
Probably the only example of illustrated Soviet homoerotica. When the Soviet censors forbid these sexually charged poems, Kuzmin and
the publisher Yakov Blokh settled on an anonymous publication. “Petropolis” followed the practice of French publishers of erotica who
provided false title pages with Amsterdam or Brussels as the place of publication to avoid legal prosecution. Kuzmin never intended the
book for public sale; copies were available to collectors of erotica directly from the author. Nevertheless, word got out and Kuzmin could
never entirely shake himself free of the taint of the book’s notoriety. “The shocking bisexuality of the verses found brilliant incarnation in
the similarly daring illustrations and head-pieces executed not without Beardsley’s influence. The theme of one-sex masculine love was
treated by the poet and the artist with such challenging boldness probably for the first time and became in fact the main subject of the book.
But thanks to Milashevsky’s undoubted talent his drawings for the Curtained Pictures cease to be a mere trifle and rank with the talented
illustrator’s best graphic works.” (Alexandr Soloviev, “The Pilgrimage to Cythera: International Exhibition of Love Eroticism in the Fine
Arts,” web exhibition). Milashevskii later became a prolific illustrator of children’s books.
$8,000 - $12,000
Lot 46
Books & Periodicals 29