Art styles and techniques

Biography

David Burliuk was born in Semyrotivka near the village of Riabushky (now Lebedyn District, Sumy Oblast) in Ukraine, brother of Volodymyr (Wladimir) Burliuk in a family descended from Ukrainian Cossacks who held premier positions in the Hetmanate. His mother, Ludmila Mikhnevich, was of ethnic Belarussian descent. Because of his given name of "David," Burliuk was frequently mistaken for a Jew.

From 1898 to 1904 he studied at the art schools in Kazan and in Odessa, as well as at the Royal Academy in Munich. His exuberant, extroverted character was recognized by Anton Azhbe, his professor at the Munich Academy, who called Burliuk a “wonderful wild steppe horse.”In 1908 an exhibition with the group Zveno ("The Link") in Kiev was organized by David Burliuk together with Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Alexander Bogomazov, Volodymyr (Wladimir) Burliuk and Aleksandra Ekster.

From 1910 he was the member of the group Jack of Diamonds.

From 1910 to 1911 he attended the Art School in Odessa. After 1911 David concetrated on poetry.

From 1911 to 1913 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MUZHZV).

In 1911 Burliuk participated in the group exhibition of the Blaue Reiter in Munich, which also included his brother Wladimir.

In 1912 David Burliuk was co-author of the Russian Futurist manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.

In 1913 he was expelled from the Academy. In the same year D. Burliuk founded the publishing venture of the futuristic writer's group Hylaea.

In 1915 David Burliuk published the book The Support of the Muses in Spring, with illustrations by Lentulov, and by David and Wladimir Burliuk.

From 1915 to 1917 he resided in the Urals with frequent trips to Moscow and Petrograd (St. Petersburg).

In 1917 he participated in an exhibition with the group Jack of Diamonds in the artists' salon in Moscow, which included Aleksandra Ekster and Kazimir Malevich.

From 1918 to 1922 he travelled to the USA via Siberia, Japan, and Canada.

In 1925 Burliuk was a co-founder of the Association of Revolutionary Masters of Ukraine (ARMU) with the members Alexander Bogomazov, Vasiliy Yermilov, Vadym Meller, Alexander Khvostenko-Khvostov, and Palmov Victor.

In 1927 he participated in an exhibition of the Latest Artistic Trends in the Russian Museum in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), together with Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Shevchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin.

David Burliuk was author of autobiographical sketches My Ancestors, Forty Years: 1890–1930.

In 1909 Burliuk painted a portrait of his future wife, Marussia, on a background of flowers and rocks on the Crimean coast. Many times thereafter he would set the image of his wife to canvas. Without question two dreams possessed his heart all his life: the face of his wife and the portrait of his homeland - first Ukraine and then his adopted country, the United States.

In 1945 an exhibit was mounted at [Irving Plaza| Irving Place Theater] in [New York City]^[3]

In 1962 he and his wife travelled to Australia where he held an exhibition at Moreton Galleries, Brisbane. It was his only Australian exhibition. During his stay there David Burliuk painted some sketches and works with Australian views.

From 1937 to 1966 Burliuk and his wife, Marussia, published Color & Rhyme, a periodical primarily concerned with charting Burliuk's activities.

In 1940, Burliuk petitioned the Soviet government for a request to visit his homeland. In exchange, he offered a sizeable collection of archival material pertaining to his contemporary and friend Vladimir Mayakovsky, which Burliuk offered to donate to the Mayakovsky Museum in addition to over 100 original paintings. Burliuk's requests were denied. He was allowed to visit the Soviet Union only in 1956 and 1965.

David Burliuk died on Long Island, New York.

Heritage

In Russian poetry, Burliuk is regarded as a trailblazer. In 1990, the Russian Academy of Futurist Poetry established the David Burliuk Prize (Otmetina) for experimental poetry awarded annually.

Marc Chagall

In Paris, 1921

Marc Chagall (Russian: Марк Заха́рович Шага́л; (6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Russian-French artist associated with several major artistic styles and one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He was an early modernist, and created works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century." According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists." For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist." Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

Before World War I, he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism." Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."^[ "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."

Russia (1906–1910)

In 1906, he moved to St. Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years.^[9] By 1907, he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.

Between 1908 to 1910, Chagall was a student of Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in St. Petersburg, he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.^[13] Bakst, also Jewish, was a designer of decorative art and was famous as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the 'Ballets Russes,' and helped Chagall by acting as a role model for Jewish success. Bakst moved to Paris a year later. Art historian Raymond Cogniat writes that after living and studying art on his own for four years, "Chagall entered into the mainstream of contemporary art. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had played a memorable initial role in his life.^[14]:30

Chagall stayed in St. Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk where he met Bella Rosenfeld. In My Life, Chagall described his first meeting her: "Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me."

Art styles and techniques

Color

According to Cogniat, in all Chagall's work during all stages of his life, it was his colors which attracted and captured the viewer's attention. During his earlier years his range was limited by his emphasis on form and his pictures never gave the impression of painted drawings. He adds, "The colors are a living, integral part of the picture and are never passively flat, or banal like an afterthought. They sculpt and animate the volume of the shapes... they indulge in flights of fancy and invention which add new perspectives and graduated, blended tones... His colors do not even attempt to imitate nature but rather to suggest movements, planes and rhythms."

He was able to convey striking images using only two or three colors. Cogniat writes, "Chagall is unrivalled in this ability to give a vivid impression of explosive movement with the simplest use of colors..." Throughout his life his colors created a "vibrant atmosphere" which was based on "his own personal vision."

His paintings would later sell for very great prices. In October 2010, for example, his painting "Bestiaire et Musique," depicting a bride and a fiddler floating in a night sky amid circus performers and animals, "was the star lot" at an auction in Hong Kong. When it sold for $4.1 million, it became the most expensive contemporary Western painting ever sold in Asia.

Subject matters

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 710