Sichath Chulin [“Small Talk or The Legend of Prague”]
AUCTION 50 |
Thursday, February 24th,
2011 at 1:00
Fine Judaica: Hebrew Printed Books, Manuscripts, Graphic & Ceremonial Art Including: The Alfonso Cassuto Collection of Iberian Art
Lot 216
(LISSITZKY, ELIEZER).
Sichath Chulin [“Small Talk or The Legend of Prague”]
Moscow: Chaver Verlag 1917
Est: $800 - $1,200
PRICE REALIZED $500
ELIEZER LISSITZKY’S FIRST COMPLETED JEWISH WORK.
The folk story of Jewish Messianic hope and miracles in Old Prague, parallels the exhilaration felt among avant-garde Russian-Jewish artists towards the apocalyptic events of the Russian Revolution. Sichath Chulin, Lissitzky’s first consciously Jewish work, created a new aesthetic experience, integrating religious and cultural origins and transforming them into a regenerated secular perspective.
See Busch-Reisinger Museum Catalogue, El Lissitzky (1987) no. 1917/1; Israel Museum Catalogue, Tradition and Revolution, pp. 104-5 and 176-7 and no. 74 i-xv; and see, A. Rudenstine, The George Costakis Collection - Russian Avant-Garde Art (1981) p. 243