6 Métiers [6 Professions].

Complete with all the playing cards. A fine example of a Père Castor educational children's book complete with all the playing cards intact. 6 Métiers features striking and colourful illustrations by the avant-garde Ukrainian-Jewish artist Nathan Altman.

Altman was born to a family of Jewish merchants in 1889 and studied art and sculpture in Odesa between 1902 and 1907 before moving to Paris in 1910. Shortly after he returned to Russia, joined Souiz Molodezhi and painted his famous Cubist portrait of Akhmatova. After the Revolution he focused more on theatre design, producing sets for the Jewish theatre in Moscow for eight years before moving to Paris yet again in 1928. In Paris he already had numerous friends in the émigré community such as Chagall, Exter and Delaunay and it's likely that he began working with Paul Faucher thanks to these links.

The illustrations are faithful to his avant-garde roots and the front cover perhaps alludes to his Soviet loyalty with the boy holding a Sickle in his hand and hammer and sickles on the floor. He did indeed return to Leningrad in 1936 where he continued to work both as a stage designer and a book illustrator.

First edition, 4to (27.5 x 24 cm); colour illustrations throughout, complete with two pages of perforated pictorial labels, invitation card to exhibition and demonstration at the Père Castor atelier loosely inserted; original printed wrappers, a fine copy.