LITHOGRAPHS

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Colour lithographs by Pougny are not rare on the art market; these sheets are never dated. They usually bear a facsimile signature (workshop stamp) "Pougny" on the right below the image, with the number from the edition on the left. These lithographs were created thanks to the efforts of Xana, who was responsible for marketing in the Pougny family. Between 1958 and 1970, she organised around twenty retrospective exhibitions of her husband's work, for each of which she selected one or two of his paintings to reproduce on posters. The paintings were reproduced on a scale of 1:1 using the lithographic process. Lithographs without text were also printed from the same stones in editions of between 100 and 300 copies. In contrast to original lithographs, in which the artist himself draws on stone, all of Pougny's colour lithographs are reproductions. Several lithographs were printed during the artist's lifetime; some of them were signed by hand.
The small monograph prepared by Gindertael in February 1957 - two months after Pougny's death - lists six lithographs printed during his lifetime. All are dated 1956: one black and white and two colour lithographs, published by the Geneva Guilde de la Gravure, as well as three lithographs for the poster of Pougny's last exhibition at the Galerie Marcel Coard. One of these posters refers to the place of printing - "Litho Marcel Manequin _ Paris". The question of which black-and-white lithograph Gindertael had in mind remains open; in any case, special copies of his monograph were supplemented by three pen-and-ink lithographs after Pougny's drawings, but these sheets were not signed.

Lithographs, printed in 1956 during Jean Pougny's lifetime. Editions Guilde de la Gravure (Geneva): three lithographs in 8 colours - "Beach", "Still life with ceramic figures" and "On the Marne". Three posters for the exhibition at the Marcel Coard Gallery (3-24 March 1956). The lithographs of posters were also printed individually, without text.

Pougny himself showed no appreciable inclination for lithography, and this is not surprising. After moving to Paris, he became more and more absorbed in developing painterly problems and was particularly interested in surface structures and spontaneous effects created by visible relief strokes on an old canvas with craquelure and abrasion - everything that makes a painting unique and that lithography lacks - with its flat surface and high print run.
Before his move to Paris, Pougny (at that time – Puni) showed no interest in lithography as well, but this technique was used in Petrograd to reproduce some of his drawings, and the catalogue raisonné contains certain details about it. Let's take a closer look at them.
It is known that the material for the catalogue raisonné was prepared by Xana. She dated Ivan's first experience with lithography as 1913, and the drawings were reproduced in the collection "Roaring Parnassus", edited by Puni himself with Matyushin and prepared by a group of Futurists (Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, Livshits, Burlyuk, etc.) in Puni's flat. Immediately after its publication, the anthology was confiscated by the censors.
Contrary to the information in the catalogue raisonné, the illustrations in the "Roaring Parnassus" were printed not by lithographic process. This was claimed by Peter Druzhinin, an expert on prints and antique books: "The publication was printed in the printing house of A. Lavrov and Co. using the letterpress process, all drawings are included in the typesetting and reproduced in the book using zincography, including the cover illustration."
Furthermore, contrary to the information in the catalogue raisonné, this collection contains not three but four drawings by Puni: on the cover and on pages 58, 83 and 88. These "wild" drawings, characteristic of Ivan's passion for Fauvism at the time, nicely match the "wild" texts of the Futurist poets.

1913. Four drawings by Ivan Puni, reproduced in zincograph in the "Roaring Parnassus" (1914)

If drawings from the "Roaring Parnassus" were to be excluded from the list of lithographs, the drawings from another edition would have to be included on the contrary.
This is the portfolio "Heroes and Victims of the Revolution" from 1918, the sheets of which were printed from lithographic stones. The publication was made by IZO Narkompros on the first anniversary of the October Revolution. The drawings, each accompanied by a biting verse by Mayakovsky, were created by Boguslavskaya, Kozlinsky, Makletsov and Puni.
Puni created 4 of the 18 characters: Worker, Laundress, Barynya and General. They are not mentioned as lithographs in the catalogue raisonné, but only described in the drawings section and illustrated with prints from this portfolio. Ten of the original drawings are now kept in the GLM (State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V.I. Dal, Moscow), but Puni's drawings are not among them. Since the artists themselves did not draw on stone, here we are also dealing with reproduction lithographs.

1918. Four lithographs after drawings by Ivan Puni: Worker, Laundress, Barynya, General. From the portfolio: Герои и Жертвы Революции. Октябрь 1917 – 1918. Рисунки: Богуславской, Козлинского, Маклецова и Пуни. Текст: Владимира Маяковского. Издание Отдела Изобразительных Искусств Комиссариата Народного Просвещения [sic]. Художественно-Графическое Ателье и Печатня М. Пивоварского. Петроград, Моховая, 8. [1918]

On the whole it seems that Xana did not attach much importance to the distinction between lithography and zincography, so there is confusion in the catalogue raisonné in two other cases. One is a reproduction of an ink drawing entitled Foxtrot, printed in 1921 by Herwarth Walden in an invitation to the "Expressionist Ball" on 8 March 1921, immediately after Puni's solo exhibition at the Sturm gallery. Walden reproduced the same drawing once more on the cover of his magazine in 1926. Both times the same zincographic cliché was used, while the catalogue raisonné lists this reproduction as a lithograph (no. 285).
Beside this, the catalogue raisonné lists two abstract lithographs from 1922 under Nos. 286 and 287, but in fact they are, of course, linocuts - in all respects similar to the linocuts Nos. 288-290. All five sheets belong to the series published in MA Aktivista Folyóirat, see section LINOCUTS