Religion and Ethnography in Alisa Poret’s Early Children’s Illustrations

• In Event: Decentered Perspectives on Illustration from the Imperial and Soviet Eras

Abstract

Alisa Poret, a student of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Pavel Filonov, transitioned to children’s illustrations in 1924. Yury Leving's analysis of her illustrations for “How the Revolution Triumphed” (1930) highlights their success in reconciling cinematic avant-garde experimentation with permissible ideological messages. This paper will explore Poret's illustrations for “The Exhibition of Gods” and “Whose Toys Are These?” (both 1930), which transform conventional Soviet anti-religious propaganda into an ethnographically accurate and symbolically sinister world, aligning with the avant-garde vision and studied by Soviet ethnographers. Poret's 1930 explorations paved the way for her groundbreaking success in crafting an internally connected world in “Kalevala” (1932) and “Yangal-Maa” (1933).

Author

• Julia Kriventsova Denne, By the Onion Sea