Vladimir Lebedev

Vladimir Vasilyevich Lebedev (1891 – 1967) was one of the central figures of the Russian avant-garde. A painter, political cartoonist and poster artist, he blended Russian folk art, lubki, futurism, constructivism, suprematism and cubism into an experimental style. He is regarded as one of the most important children's book illustrators of the Soviet period, and his collaboration with the poet Samuil Marshak is counted among the most innovative in the history of children's literature.

He began painting at fourteen, producing postcards sold in a shop in Saint Petersburg, and his first exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts followed five years later. From 1913 he worked as a political cartoonist for several satirical journals, including Satirikon, and he was a prolific illustrator for children's magazines. Between 1920 and 1922 he produced more than five hundred posters for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and the Department for Agitation and Propaganda. Displayed in empty shop windows known as ROSTA windows, they typically showed a single figure in bold colour, built from spare geometric forms.

In the mid-1920s he partnered with Marshak on picture books and on the politically conscious production books unique to the Soviet Union, which taught children about the world of work. Titles such as Circus, Ice Cream and How a Plane Made a Plane were well received, and the critic Nikolai Punin, who wrote the first monograph on him, considered him one of the era's most important illustrators. After Raduga was shut down in 1930 and social realism became state policy, his style grew more naturalistic and his experiments came to an end. He is still classed among the most important Russian and Soviet children's illustrators.