Muller-Alsbach Annja, Pardey Andres, Stahlhut Heinz (ed.). 0,10, Ivan Puni: Works from the Collection Herman Berninger, Zurich and Photographs of the Russian Revolution from the Collection Ruth und Peter Herzog, Basel: 12 April to 28 September 2003

Bern: Benteli, 2003. — 264 p. — ISBN 3-7165-1308-3.Born in 1892 near Saint Petersburg, Ivan Puni is regarded as one of the founders and leading lights of the Russian avant-garde, alongside Kazimir Malevich and others. He was an organizer of and participant in the legendary futurist exhibitions "Tramway V" and "0.10". In 1918 he started teaching at the State Free Art Workshops (the former art academy) in Saint Petersburg (then renamed Petrograd), before Chagall offered him a post at the art school he was founding in Vitebsk. Puni was one of the first avant-garde artists to realize how difficult it would be to work independently of Soviet propaganda, and in 1919 he decided to go into exile. He lived in Berlin until 1923 before settling permanently in Paris.
Thanks to Herman Berninger, a friend of Puni and collector of his work, a number of paintings thought to have been lost – especially from his Russian and Berlin periods – were rediscovered. One of the most spectacular finds was Puni's masterpiece Synthetischer Musiker (Synthetic musician), painted in 1922 for the "Grosse Berliner Kunstausstellung". Berninger met Puni (then working under the name of Jean Pougny) and his wife, Xana, in Paris in 1952. After Puni's death in 1956 Berninger and Puni's widow compiled a catalogue raisonne and organized a number of retrospectives.
This publication offers for the first time a representative cross section of the Berninger Collection and its important works from all periods by this Russian avant-garde artist: cubo-futurist still lifes, suprematist compositions from his Saint Petersburg and Berlin periods, ink drawings, works clearly influenced by Neue Sachlichkeit (New objectivity), and the emphatically painterly works of his later years.
Regardless of stylistic expression, the question of the relationship between reality and image is a constant leitmotif in Puni's work. Color fields, plastic form, letters of the alphabet, words, and everyday objects had equal importance for his painting. In the course of his artistic development, however, he came increasingly to regard abstraction as a dead end and returned to painting still lifes, interiors, and street scenes, which he rendered in ornamental, planar compositions.Guido Magnaguagno. Foreword
Biography Ivan Puni/Jean Pougny
Ivan Puni in Russia
B. Lifschits. Ivan Puni and Xana Boguslawskaya
Olga Rozanowa. Letters to Alexei Kruchyonykh
Mstislav Dobuzhinski. Letter to Elisaveta Dobuzhinskaya
John E. Bowlt. Transcending Reason
Works by Ivan Puni 1910–1917
Peter Herzog. "October" – The New Icons
Photographs of the Russian Revolution
Heiko Haumann/Andreas Guski. Revolution and Photography
Herman Berninger. Art in Service of the New Society
Works by Ivan Puni 1917–1919
Ivan Puni in Berlin
Hans Richter. Ivan Puni
Nina Berberova. The Italics Are Mine
Viktor Shklovski. About Ivan Puni and His Wife, Xana Boguslavskaya-Puni
Heinz Stahlhut. "An Ultimate in Pictorial Possibility"
Works by Ivan Puni 1920–1923
Jean Pougny in Paris
Annette Kaufman. Mr. and Mrs. Pougny
Jacques Prevert. L'atelier de Pougny
Roman Gul. I Bore Russia with Me
Gregorio Sciltian. My Adventure
Hans Richter. Xana Boguslavskaya
Herman Berninger. The Great Adventure
Gotthard Jedlicka. Jean Pougny
Works by Jean Pougny 1924–1956
Herman Berninger. Memoirs
Checklist
Works and Dokuments from the Collection Herman Berninger and Photographs from the Ruth und Peter Herzog Collect!on, BaseI
Bibliography
Photo Credits