Soviet Union · Moscow–Petrograd / 1923
Pro eto · About This
The private life of montage
Not every radical image speaks to a crowd. Rodchenko's designs for Mayakovsky's 1923 poem Pro eto turn photographic fragments into a language for love, jealousy and separation. The Toledo Museum of Art identifies the poem's subject as Mayakovsky's relationship with Lilya Brik. Faces, bodies and surroundings can be cut apart and brought into new relationships on paper. Placed beside For the Voice from the same year, this book shows two different jobs for experimental design: public recitation and intimate feeling.
- Date
- 1923
- Maker / designer
- Aleksandr Rodchenko; Vladimir Mayakovsky
- Material
- Photomontage reproductions; letterpress
- Context
- Soviet avant-garde bookmaking encompassing personal emotion as well as collective ambition.
Evidence: Date established · Place established
Historical record
- Published in 1923 with photomontage reproductions and letterpress.
- The poem concerns Mayakovsky's relationship with Lilya Brik.