25 - Sergei Soudeikine (1883–1946) – The Bat. 1920. Lubok printer. 113 x 78 cm. Original poster, lithographic print, mounted on canvas. Condition A-, very slight traces of original creases; two slight vertical tears, each 9 cm long, restored in the upper portion.

Sergei Soudeikine (1883–1946) – The Bat. 1920. Lubok printer. 113 x 78 cm. Original poster, lithographic print, mounted on canvas. Condition A-, very slight traces of original creases; two slight vertical tears, each 9 cm long, restored in the upper portion. Trained as a painter in Moscow, Soudeikine also devoted himself to stage design. He first traveled to Paris in 1913 to collaborate with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, then returned in 1920 with the “Chauve-Souris” troupe, a vaudeville-style theater troupe founded in 1908 by Nikita Balieff, whose name refers both to the troupe and to the theater they had left behind in Moscow. Fleeing Russia in 1918 due to the Bolshevik Revolution, the troupe settled in Paris, where it performed for the first time in 1920 at the Théâtre Femina on the Champs-Élysées, before continuing on to New York. The style of the show mirrors the poster: extremely modern and disconcerting for the time, yet immediately hailed by the audience. The poster also serves as a metaphor for this forced exile. Unlike what Parisian audiences of the Roaring Twenties were accustomed to, the troupe presented performances just as it did in its home country—that is, blending cabaret, improvisation, music hall, dance, traditional Russian theater, circus, and avant-garde. As a result, the poster never featured any text, since people came to see a performance by the Chauve Souris troupe, and what unfolded on stage was always a surprise. This extremely rare poster, which reinterprets a traditional style with astonishing modernity, bridging the gap between Art Nouveau and Art Deco, is imbued with theatricality. A massive stage curtain parts to reveal a bat flying from the Kremlin in Russia toward Paris (the silhouettes of the Eiffel Tower and Luna Park are visible), while a masked clown appears in the foreground. In 1923, Soudeikine settled in the United States and collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera.