Cover of magazine 'Art' 1920

This is the cover of ‘Art’ magazine, made in 1920 in Kyiv by Heorhiy Narbut, and it’s pretty striking. Narbut's got this limited palette, mostly blacks and oranges, deploying them in these really graphic, almost stencil-like shapes. Check out the triangles, repeated and stacked to create depth and shadow. There is a figure there, sort of floating between the foreground and background. In one hand, he carries a sickle. In the other, he appears to conjure a flock of birds that are frozen in a ring. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on, what any of the symbolism represents. The whole image has a very stylized, almost folk-art feel, but with a modern, constructivist edge. I’m put in mind of the German Expressionist woodcuts, but with a Ukrainian twist. In the end, there is a real sense of looking into an earlier time.