page_title: David Burliuk
section_title: Education, career
hierarchical_section_title: David Burliuk / Biography / Education, career
caption_attribution_description: справа налево: Крученых, Д. Бурлюк, Маяковский, Н. Бурлюк, Лившиц
context_page_description: David Davidovich Burliuk was a Ukrainian poet, artist, publicist and book illustrator associated with the Futurist, Neo-Primitivist and Russian Futurism movements. Burliuk is often described as "the father of Russian Futurism."
context_section_description: From 1898 to 1904 he studied at Kazan and Odessa art schools, 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 1907, he made contact with the Russian art world; he met and befriended Mikhail Larionov, and they are both credited as being major forces in bringing together the contemporary art world. In 1908 an exhibition with the group Zveno ("The Link") in Kiev was organized by David Burliuk together with Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Alexander Bogomazov, his brother Volodymyr (Wladimir) Burliuk and Aleksandra Ekster. The exhibition was a flop, especially because they were all unknown painters. The Burliuks and Larionov left for the aforementioned brothers' home in Chernianka, also known as Hylea; it was during this stay that their work became more Avant-Garde. That autumn, whilst visiting Ekster, they organized an exhibition which took place in the street; it was a success, and enough money was raised to go to Moscow.
  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.
  The Futurist literary group Hylaea (Russian: Гилея [Gileya]) was initiated in 1910 by David Burlyuk and his brothers at their aforementioned estate near Kherson, and were quickly joined by Vasily Kamensky and Velimir Khlebnikov, with Aleksey Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky joining in 1911). Soon afterwards the group would morph into literary Cubo-Futurism, the predominant form of Futurism in Russia.
  From the start to the end, Cubo-Futurism always had an air of scandal about it. The artists and poets scandalized the public by walking in public spaces wearing ridiculous clothes and painting their faces, by writing plays incomprehensible to the public (the most notorious being Victory over the Sun, about a group of Futurists aiming to destroy reason), and by the fights between them and the audience at their poetry recitations. In 1913-4, Mayakovsky, Kamensky, and Burliuk decided to go on poetry tours; fury almost always followed, even on an occasion when Mayakovsky read Pushkin. Alexander Rodchenko later claimed that that specific recital "was the first time I had seen such a frenzied, furious audience". Even during the First World War their activites carried on: at the 1915 Christmas Party, hosted by Lilya and Osip Brik, the tree was hung from the roof, upside-down, and the guests arrived with vegetables in their buttonholes and in bizarre makeup. Russian Futurism would only end after the Revolution of 1917. 
  Most of the Cubo-Futurists also resisted the Futurists in Italy. A brief alliance with their rivals, the Ego-Futurists, did not end very well. Burliuk's colleague Velimir Khlebnikov also developed Zaum, a poetry style.
  From 1910 he was the member of the group Jack of Diamonds, and from 1910 to 1911 he attended the Art School in Odessa. After 1911 David concentrated on poetry and manifestoes, and at Christmas he made the acquaintance of Benedikt Livshits, a poet. From 1911 to 1913 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MUZHVZ), and that year participated in the group exhibition of the Blaue Reiter in Munich, which also included his brother Wladimir. He also contributed an article to the Blaue Reiter Almanac.
  In December 1912 David Burliuk was co-author and one of the many signatories of the manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste with the other members of Hylaea, one of the major manifestoes of Russian Futurism, a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto". 
  In 1913 he was expelled from the Art Academy, as well as Mayakovsky. In the same year D. Burliuk founded the publishing venture o
caption: Burliuk (2nd from right)
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