page_title: Cubo-Futurism
section_title: Art
hierarchical_section_title: Cubo-Futurism / Art
context_page_description: Cubo-Futurism was an art movement that arose in early 20ᵗʰ century Russia, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo-Futurism was the main school of painting and sculpture practiced by the Russian Futurists.
  In 1913, the term ‘Cubo-Futurism’ first came to describe works from members of the poetry group ‘Hylaeans, ’ as they moved away from poetic Symbolism towards Futurism and zaum, the experimental “visual and sound poetry of Kruchenykh and Khlebninkov”. Later in the same year the concept and style of ‘Cubo-Futurism’ became synonymous with the works of artists within Russian post-revolutionary avant-garde circles as they interrogated non-representational art through the fragmentation and displacement of traditional forms, lines, viewpoints, colours, and textures within their pieces. The impact of Cubo-Futurism was then felt within performance art societies, with Cubo-Futurist painters and poets collaborating on theatre, cinema, and ballet pieces that aimed to break theatre conventions through the use of nonsensical zaum poetry, emphasis on improvisation, and the encouragement of audience participation.
context_section_description: For Cubo-Futurist artists, this movement represented a shift in stylistic values from a perception of painting as a reflection of their current reality into a portrayal of idealism through depictions of a perfect future defined by equality and an organised collective consciousness. 
  One such example would be Kazimir Malevich’s 1912-13 The Knife Grinder (The Glittering Edge). The flickering of reflective metallic colours creates a dynamic representation of motion and energy, depicting the “mechanical vibration and dynamic rhythm” of modernisation through industrialisation and mechanical harmony. The knife grinder himself is central to the composition, camouflaged within the dense abstracted geometric shapes that surround and encompass him, invoking the idea that the man has fused into the mechanical perfection of a giant organised system. To Malevich and other artists of the Cubo-Futurist movement, works like this acted as a social metaphor highlighting the process of transformation, revolution, social rebuilding, and proletariat collectivism they wished to see in their society’s future. Complex abstracted geometric shapes and representations of perfected mechanical society’s highlights the revolutionary nature of their work as, “only futurist art is constructed on collective principles… Only futurist art is, at the present time, ‘the art of the proletariat’” as painter and sculptor Nathan Altman (1889-1970) once stated.
  Cubo-Futurist artists are unique in their independence and autonomy from other members of the group. Non-representational artists experimenting with Cubo-Futurism – such as Kandinsky, Larionov, Malevich, and Tatlin – adopted the distinctive ideals and theoretical background of the movement but followed their own aesthetic path, thus depicting the freedom these artists were given to express their own perceptions of a modernised world.
caption: Kazimir Malevich, The Knife Grinder (Principle of Glittering) (1912-13), oil on canvas, 79.534 cm × 79.534 cm, Yale University Art Gallery
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