DAVID BURLIUK: THE AMERICAN PERIOD

David Burliuk is one of the founders of a new art of the 20th century. He was a recognized ideologist and driving force of a new direction in the global art of the beginning of the 20th century - futurism. Among art connoisseurs who buy paintings and antique dealers, Burliuk’s Cubo-Futurist paintings tend to be the most popular. Nowadays the Burliuk’s antique painting prices on XXX art are consistently high. His early works are on the top of antique paintings prices. Experimental Burliuk antique paintings typically sell for tenths a thousand dollars.

 ^{David Burliuk Source: bbc.com}

A special place in Burliuk's biography is having an American period, since it is the most long-lasting and fruitful in terms of different directions of his creative activity. It is less known and studied than other periods. Immediately after the arrival from Japan, the first acquaintance of Americans with the canvases of the "father of Russian Futurism" took place at the Philadelphia Academy of Art, together with the works of well-known Russian artists: B. Grigoryev, O. Arkhipenko, and others. Burlyuk's activity is also reflected in the publication of his own poetry collections and prose works. Cooperation in the newspaper "Russian Voice", where he covered the literary and artistic life of New York, allowed him to be in the vortex of the artistic life of the huge city. On the initiative of Burlyuk, the magazine "Color and rhyme" was founded, the publisher of which was his wife. Together with representatives of the Russian emigration, Burlyuk worked in the theater, writing scenery for performances.

David Burlyuk's popularity in the USA was no less than in Russia. This is evidenced, for example, by the arrangement of the First Pre-Spring Ball in honor of David Burliuk - "the field marshal of world futurism" - according to the words of the local press.

The lack of a complete catalog of painting and graphic works of D. Burliuk, created by him in the USA, does not allow art critics to draw any far-sighted conclusions. But the known works speak of the desire of Burlyuk to reflect the world of objects. This can be explained by the general tendency of American art of those times with an emphasis on realistic art. However, for Burlyuk, it was not realism of an academic kind, rather, of the so-called naive direction. Two bright works by D. Burliuk were written in this manner: "Landscape. State of New Mexico", 1949 and "Mary Rose and her twins", 1940. 

Burlyuk's attention to folk peasant creativity was usual for his paints and contributed to the renewal of his plastic language and democratic orientation. Burlyuk missed his Motherland, his childhood years spent in Ukraine. Being far from Ukraine, he often turned to the theme of the village, ordinary Ukrainians ("A woman milks a cow", 1947).

Very interesting from the point of view of paint technique is the painting created in the late American period, "Landscape with a wagon and a mill", 1940, which is connected with Burliuk's futuristic searches of the early 1910s, when he enthusiastically experimented with the compositional and textural possibilities of painting.

^{David Burliuk. Landscape with a Carriage and a Mill (a landscape from four points of view). 1940.  Source: wikiart}

It was then that he developed the technique of painting a landscape from four points of view, in a declarative and shocking public form, which defended the artist's right to his own view of the world. A decade later, he repeated the same technique in "Landscape with a wagon and a mill" and make it even more visible.

Burliuk’s vivacity was well-remembered after his death in 1967. The New York Times linked the artist's diverse work with his larger-than-life personality: “This is painting at its most high-spirited; as such it communicates the great vitality that obviously went into making it.” 

^{Cover image David Burliuk. Landscape in New Mexico.1942. Source: wikiart}