Zelenaya Kareta. [The Green Carriage].: Translated from Yiddish by Genrikh Sapgir.

First and only edition.

Inscribed by the art editor N. Kholodovskaya: "Inesiku o[t] / Natashi" [To Inna from Natasha.].


These verses by the Soviet Yiddish poet Shike (Ovsei) Driz (1908-1971) were masterfully translated by Genrikh Sapgir (1928-1999), one of the leaders of the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement and member of the underground 'Lianozovo Group'.

The book was illustrated by an artist, writer, art theorist and one of the 'founding fathers' of the Moscow Conceptualist artistic movement Viktor Pivovarov (born 1937). He studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute under Pavel Korin. As well as some others avant-garde artists since 1930s illustrated children's books to stay away from repressions, Pivovarov did the same in 1960-1970s. Since late 1960s he worked in the Detskaya Literatura publishing house where he met representatives of the 'Lianozovo group' Igor Kholin and Genrikh Sapgir, and through them, Ovsei Driz and Ilya Kabakov. It's interesting that this book includes the portrait of Ovsei Driz himself (p. 21). Pivovarov was also part of the Sretensky Boulevard Group, a loosely associated community of artists with neighbouring studios in Moscow that included Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov. In 1982 the artist moved to Prague.


The book is from the children's collection of Inna Shmeleva (1929-2020), an artist, who studied under Ely Bielutin, the founder of The New Reality artistic academy. In 1962 Shmeleva participated in the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artist at the Central Exhibition Hall (Manège) which was severely criticized by Nikita Khrushchev. This event marked the end of the period called as the Khrushchev Thaw.
OCLC locates two copies of this edition: in the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress.