• 03. [A Boris Aronson Avant Garde Masterpiece!] Moser, Ben-Zion [Bentsiyon]. Cover Illustration by Boris Aronson [Boris Solomonovich Aronsson, Borekh-Ber Aronsson]. Text illustrations by Yasha Zeldin

BENI: KINDER ROMAN. ERSHTER TAYL [COMPLETE, NO MORE PUBLISHED] [BENNY, BENY] בעני:‏ ‏(קינדער־ראמאן)

Nyu York [New York]: Farlag umpartayishe Idishe arbeter kinder shuln, 1930. Item #43377

; 1st edition. Original modernist illustrated boards, large 8vo, 156 + 1 pages. 21 cm. In Yiddish. Title translates as, “Benny. A Children’s Novel. First Part.” Includes text illustrations by Y. Zeldin.
Rare Yiddish children's novel with dramatic avant-garde cover designed by Boris Aronson, plus several modernist vignettes by Yashe Zeldin.
Cover artist Boris Aronson (1898 –1980) “was an American scenic designer for Broadway and Yiddish theatre. He won the Tony Award for Scenic Design six times in his career. The son of a Rabbi, Aronson was born in Kiev, in the Russian Empire (in present-day Ukraine), and enrolled in art school during his youth.
Aronson became an apprentice to the designer Aleksandra Ekster, who introduced him to the directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Tairov, who influenced him. These three theatre and art veterans were advocates of the Constructivist school in Russia, as opposed to Stanislavski's form of Realism, and they convinced Aronson to embrace the Constructivist style….
In Berlin he exhibited at the seminal Van Diemen Gallery ‘First Exhibition of Russian Art,’ alongside the Constructivists El Lissitzky and Naum Gabo, which introduced Constructivism to the West. He wrote two books in Berlin, on Marc Chagall and Jewish graphic art, before he obtained an immigration visa for America in 1923. He moved to the Lower East Side in New York City and began designing sets and costumes for the more experimental of the city's Yiddish theatres, including the Unser Theater, the Schildkraut Theatre, and most notably Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre
He achieved fame in New York's Jewish community when he designed Schwartz's 1926 revival of Abraham Goldfaden's play The Tenth Commandment. Although he shunned politics, Aronson produced sets for the Communist affiliated ARTEF (Arbeiter Teater Farband, Workers' Theatre Union), such as Lag Boymer and Jim Kooperkop in 1930. However, he soon after left the Yiddish Theatre to prevent his work's ‘ghettoization’, and debuted on Broadway, in 1932, with a revival of Vernon Duke and Yip Harburg's Walk a Little Faster. During the 1930s, he worked on productions by the Group Theatre, including works by Clifford Odets and Irwin Shaw” (Wikipedia) as well as for Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and the musical Cabaret.

Yasha Zeldin was an illustrator of Yiddish-language books and periodicals, primarily in New York during the mid-20th century.
The dramatic cover consists of a modernist illustration on paper mounted (as issued) onto the orange boards.
Ilk Global Avantgarde, USA 44. Futur Antérieur (2009) p. 97. See also www.mahj.org/en/decouvrir-collections-betsalel/beni-kinder-roman-11542
A damaged copy with corners and spine ends bumped and some losses to the binding sold at auction in 2023 for over 1200 Euros (over $1400) with commissions.

OCLC: 19306601.
Tiny corner chip to mounted illustration, not affecting design. Some stains on the rear board, bit of toning as expected, otherwise Very Good Condition. Dramatic! (B) (YID-47-7-XL-’cce).

Sold