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David Burliuk


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David Burliuk

David Burliuk, Russian/American, 1882-1967.

David Burliuk was a Russian modernist painter who came to the United States in 1922. He was a founder and member of
"The Blue Rider" with Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc between 1910-1914, which became a major group in the early
development of German Expressionism. The "Blue Rider" group drew their artistic influence from the bright colors of
the early Fauvist and Cubist painters and included works by Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee,
Henri Rousseau as well as Burliuk's. David Burliuk was also a poet, co-founder and member of "Cubo-Futurism", in 1911.
This movement was mainly a literary movement whose members were fascinated with the speed and dynamicism of modern life.
With his manifesto, "Slap In The Face", David Burliuk outlined his reasons for rejecting all previous art forms in favor
of modernity. It is for these reasons, many art scholars consider Burliuk to be the "Father of Russian Futurism".

David Burliuk fled to Japan after the Russian Revolution where he lived for 2 years before emigrating to the U. S. and
arriving in New York City in 1922. He became a U. S. citizen in 1930.

Although Burliuk's American works differ from his earlier Russian paintings, they nevertheless encompass many of the same
elements of Fauvism, Expressionism and Symbolism. In this work, "Gloucester, 1934", the bright, almost unnatural, colors of
the early Fauvist and the heightened, symbolic colors and exaggerated imagery of the later German Expressionist movements
are employed, more reflective of the artist's mood than of the actual colors before him.

This painting was included in an important one man show, Burliuk Paintings, 1929 -1939 which opened at the Philip Boyer Gallery,
69 East 57th Street, NYC from April 3 -22, 1939. In the lengthy introductory essay on the show, author Martha Davidson wrote
for the Boyer Gallery, "On the surfaces of these canvases Burliuk displays a harmony of vibrant hues in which the scene is
completely immersed. At other times he paints in patches of dissonant colors, the synchrony of which is at once dynamic and
explosive. Distortions of form, heightened by the use of thick impasto projecting in parts as relief, frequently lend fantasy
to those pictures that recall Russian folk art. Burliuk's latest paintings are volcanic, expressed with chromatic fury, painted
without brush or palette knife but squeezed from tubes of unadulterated color."

A number of paintings from this exhibit employed the Symbolism of his earlier years and dealt with major world events such as
Adolph Hitler's rise to power in the 1930's (The Egg Robbers), and the lasting effect of the World War I (Refugees, Horrors of War).
Symbolism is also present in this painting. Although the clear meaning of the three men in the boat rowing toward a waving figure
on the dock, and the dark suited man accompanied by a glamorous woman in a red dress may be difficult to decipher, clearly this is
not a typical scene of a working harbor.

This painting, along with 22 other oils and 9 watercolors, traveled on to many West Coast museums, including The San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, from July 30 - September 3, 1939 and the Tacoma Art Association, Tacoma, WA thereafter.

In addition to several other one man shows, David Burliuk also had his works exhibited at the Societe Anonyme, 1924; Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1926-46; J.B. Neumann Gallery, 1927; Morton Gallery, 1928; Dorothy Paris Gallery, 1933-35; California
Palace of the Legion of Honor 1931; Philip Boyer Gallery, 1935-39; Phillips Collection, 1937; Corcoran Gallery, 1939-47;
ACA Gallery, 1941-61; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1943-46, 1949-50, 1958, 1966; Havana, Cuba, 1955; Society
of Independent Artists; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

His works are in the collections of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art;
Brooklyn Museum; Boston Museum of Fine Art; Phillips Collection; Yale University; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Credit: Falk, Who Was Who in American Art
           Boyer Galleries, Burliuk Paintings, 1929-1939
           Barbara Rominski, San Francisco Museum of Art

On exhibit: "Gloucester, Massachusetts. 1934".
Signed lower left.
Oil on canvas 24" x 30".
Exhibited: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1939



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