Burlyuk, David Davidovich

David Davidovich Burlyuk, Burlyuk also spelled Burliuk, (born July 9 [July 21, New Style], 1882, Semirotovshchina, Kharkov, Ukraine, Russian Empire (now in Kharkiv, Ukraine)—died Jan. 15, 1967, Long Island, N.Y., U.S.), Russian poet, painter, critic, and publisher who became the centre of the Russian Futurist movement, even though his output in the fields of poetry and painting was smaller than that of his peers. Burlyuk excelled at discovering talent and was one of the first to publish the poetry of Velimir Khlebnikov and to recognize Vladimir Mayakovsky’s brilliance. It was largely because of Burlyuk’s efforts that the Russian avant-garde became known in Europe and the United States

Burlyuk was the son of an estate manager and the oldest of a group of talented siblings. After graduating from high school, he studied at art schools in Kazan (1898–99) and Odessa (1899–1901). For Burlyuk, studying art was merely a formality. His real interest was in organizing exhibitions. After a short period of study at the Royal Arts Academy of Munich (1902–03) and the studio of Fernand Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1904), Burlyuk returned to Russia, where he participated in exhibitions in Kharkov (1905) and Moscow (1906–07). In 1908 he organized two exhibitions of contemporary art: “Venok-Stefanos” in Moscow and “Zveno” (“Link”) in Kiev, where he published his first manifesto. During this period he also participated in the St. Petersburg exhibition “Modern Currents in Art.” In 1909–10 he returned to Odessa in order to receive a diploma.

From 1910 to 1914 Burlyuk studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture—from which he was expelled, along with Mayakovsky, for his “obsession with Futurism.” During this period he was extremely active in organizational and exhibition work, holding memberships in many groups—among them Union of Youth (a group of Futurist artists based in St. Petersburg), Jack of Diamonds (an avant-garde group based in Moscow), and Der Blaue Reiter (group based in Munich)—and participating in most of the nonacademic and avant-garde exhibitions.

Burlyuk became one of the leaders of the avant-garde movement, publishing articles, manifestos, and appeals and organizing public talks and debates. He was one of the founders of the art and literary group Hylaea (Russian: Gileya), which, together with Aleksey Kruchyonykh, Mayakovsky, and Khlebnikov, published in 1912 the famous manifesto of Russian Futurism, Poshchochina obshchestvennomu vkusu (A Slap in the Face of Public Taste). In 1913–14 he took part in a “Futurist tour” of lectures and poetry readings throughout Russia with the poets Mayakovsky and Vasily Kamensky. It was because of his activity in all these fields that he was soon to become known as “The Father of Russian Futurism.”

Burlyuk’s artistic evolution took him from Post-Impressionism (1900–01; which he referred to as Impressionism) to Neo-Primitivism (early 1910s, influenced by Mikhail Larionov), a style in which he created some of his best paintings. He endeavoured to synthesize principles of Russian folk art with avant-garde concepts of European painting and fashioned his own artistic principle of “the depiction of an object from various points of view” (as in his painting Bridge: Landscape from Four Points of View, 1911). At the same time, Burlyuk also painted traditional realistic landscapes, portraits, and still lifes in which surface texture played an important role. From 1915 to 1917 Burlyuk lived in the Urals, and from 1920 to 1922 he resided in Japan. In his later years Burlyuk’s most noteworthy work was in the field of publishing in the United States, where he moved in 1922. There he published the journal Color and Rhyme (1930–66) and contributed both writings and artwork.