H2SO4 GROUP – H2S04. Tbilisi: H2SO4, 1924. 4° (287 x 205 mm). In Georgian. 48 leaves with printed

H2SO4 GROUP – H2S04. Tbilisi: H2SO4, 1924. 4° (287 x 205 mm). In Georgian. 48 leaves with printed typographic designs and photographic illustrations. (Minor marginal spotting and soiling.) Original printed card wrappers designed by Iraklii Gamrekeli (rebacked preserving some of the original spine, some soiling); housed in a modern cloth box. Provenance: Simon Chikovani (1902-1966; presentation inscription to:) – Demna Shengelaia (1896-1980; three lines of verse in pencil on verso of leaf 35).

FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY OF THE RARE FIRST PUBLICATION OF THIS BOLD AVANT-GARDE GROUP, INSCRIBED BY CHIKOVANI TO NOVELIST DEMNA SHENGELAI. Simon Chikovani, H2SO4 spokesman and one of the century's most important Georgian poets, famously declared: 'I do not even want to know that there have been other men before me' – a statement adopted as the group's motto. The name of the group, i.e. sulfuric acid, is a reference to the group’s desire for the destruction of traditional literature and art. Shengelai, to whom Chikovani inscribed this copy, published Sanavardo in 1926, a novel about the decline of a princely family very much in keeping with this conception of the doomed old world. H2SO4 consisted almost exclusively of Georgians who aimed to create a distinctive Georgian school from the ashes of the pre-Revolutionary Romantic Movement: Beno Gordeziani, Iraklii Gamrekeli, Pavlo Nozadze, Zhango Gogoberidze, Akakii Beliashvili, Budzina Abuladze, Nikoloz Shengelaia and Shalva Alkhazishvili. Breaking the Rules, pp.149-150; MoMA, The Russian Avant-Garde Book, pp.128-129.

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