Ivan Rerberg Sold at Auction Prices

A RUSSIAN DRAWING OF A GIRL BY RERBERG, 1916

RERBERG, IVAN IVANOVICH (RUSSIAN 1869-1932), Manon Lescault, 1916, watercolor and ink on paper, 31.5 x 23 cm (12 1/2 x 9 1/8 in), signed and dated on front, titled on verso. LOT NOTES Ivan Rerberg was a graphic artist, author of bookplates. He graduated from the Department of Graphic Arts of the Higher Art and Technical Studios in Moscow. He also studied at the Department of Architecture of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in the class of professor Novakovsky (1915). Rerberg began his artistic career as a painter and architect; later he became a graphic artist. He worked on books for over 30 years, creating hundreds of book covers. After the revolution he cooperated with Krasnaya Nov, a state publishing house. In 1924 he worked in Belgium as the supervising architect at the construction of the Soviet Pavilion at the International Cooperative Exhibition in Ghent. In the following years he made sketches for the Mosselprom pavilions purposed for exhibitions abroad. The typeface developed by Ivan Rerberg in 1935 was used by Yury Gordon for creating modern typefaces used for advertisement and accidental printing (1997). PROVENANCE INFORMATION The current lot comes from the collection of the esteemed collector and art critic Viktor Kholodkov (1948-2015), who fulfilled his passion for books, avant-garde design and paper memorabilia by devoting his life to collecting and dealing of prominent works of Russian graphic art of the first half of the 20th century. Kholodkov acquired a multitude of books and artworks throughout the decades, meticulously labeling and archiving every single item. Many came directly from the most preeminent artists of the time, as well as from their families and estates. He also possessed a vast number of drawings from the famous collection of another avant-garde enthusiast, Nikolai Khardzhiev. After leaving the USSR in 1989 and settling in California, Viktor continued his work as a Soviet art dealer and critic, actively publishing various articles and contributing to several major Russian avant-garde exhibitions across the U.S., such as the 1991 exhibition Russia Under Fire in the 40s on the West Coast and the 1992 Guggenheim exhibition The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde. Kholodkov also contributed to the archives of the biggest American istitutions. His unique selection of over 2000 Russian sheet music covers was acquired by The Library of Congress, and an extensive amount of material related to VKhUTEMAS is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum.