Kukryniksy
Moscow: The State Tretyakov Gallery, 1941. Item #970
55 pages, plates: illustrations, portraits; 18 cm. One of 600 copies. At head of title: Комитет по делам искусств при СНК СССР; Государственная Третьяковская галерея (The Committee on Arts Affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR; The State Tretyakov Gallery). This copy bears signs of water damage and contains multiple library stamps from its former possession in a Soviet library.
The Kukryniksy, a collective pseudonym for Soviet caricaturists Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov, first met at Moscow's VKhUTEMAS art school in the early 1920s and began their collaboration in 1924. They rose to prominence in the 1930s with their incisive political cartoons for the satirical magazine Krokodil, notably lampooning fascist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During World War II, their work extended to influential TASS Windows political posters, continuing post-war with the Cold War series. Besides their celebrated caricatures, they were accomplished in Socialist Realism and also produced significant landscape and portrait art. Their collective and individual contributions earned them the title of People's Artists of the USSR in 1958, among other accolades. Their legacy includes over a thousand works, notably housed in Alexandre Garese's collection.
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