DAVID BURLIUK (1882-1967) Still life of flowers on a beach with a coastal city in the background

signed and dated ‘Burliuk 1945’ (lower left) oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm Painted in 1945 The bouquet set on the sand before the sea is one of the defining motifs of David Burliuk’s American period. The “father of Russian Futurism” settled in the United States in 1922 and returned to the theme again and again. Here the thick, vibrant brushwork of the flowers stands out against a coastal town built up in planes of colour. The energy of his avant-garde beginnings is put to the service of a poetry of light and the seaside. David Burliuk was a painter, poet and publisher, and one of the founders of Russian Futurism. Born in 1882 near Kharkiv, he studied at the art schools of Kazan and Odessa, then in Munich and Paris. In 1911 he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he befriended Vladimir Mayakovsky; both were expelled in 1914 for their Futurist activities. With his brothers, Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchenykh and Mayakovsky he formed the Hylaea group and co-signed the manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1912). He also exhibited with the Jack of Diamonds and Der Blaue Reiter. After the Revolution he travelled across Siberia to Japan, where he spent two years with Victor Palmov, and in 1922 he settled in New York. Together with his wife Marussia he later founded the Burliuk Gallery in Hampton Bays, Long Island. He died in Southampton, New York, in 1967.