The Dawn of Cubism
The Birth of Abstract Art in Russia
Olga
Vladimirovna Rozanova (1886-1918)
Olga
Vladimirovna Rozanova was born in 1886 in Melenki, a small town near Vladimir.
Unlike Liubov' Popova and many other avant-garde artists, she did not travel
to Italy or France to get inspired by the most recent developments in Western
painting. Therefore, her overall progress as an avant-garde artist is even
more remarkable. She began her art education in 1904, attending art studios of
K. Bol'shakov and K. Yuon in Moscow and studying for a short time at the
Stroganov School of Applied Art. After moving to St. Petersburg, she went to
private school of E.N. Zvantseva and in 1911 became one of the most active
members of the Union of Youth, an organization that organized and
sponsored art exhibitions, public lectures and discussions.
From 1911 to 1915,
Rozanova experimented with Neo-Primitivism, Cubo-Futurism. Her early works
show greater influence of the Italian Futurism than the French Cubism.
Rozanova's paintings of this period consist of strong straight lines,
frequently combined with triangular and circular shapes. The straight lines
and triangles are pointing in various directions; their angles are often
turned towards the center of the picture. This combination makes the
composition strong and dramatic. The triangles are made of slashing lines that
invade the picture from the sides, trying to reach the center.
In
1912, Rozanova started a close friendship with the outstanding Russian
Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh. They were writing "transrational"
(zaumnaia) poetry to create a new universal poetic language based on the
destruction of traditional grammar and the meanings of the words, the use of
the neologisms, assonances, and illogical combinations of words and sounds.
Rozanova became one of the first artists of the Russian avant-garde associated
with the Futurist movement. In 1913, she started to design and illustrate
books by her Futurist friends. This led to the creation of her own
transrational poems, published in 1917 (in Kruchenykh's collection, Valos)
and in 1919, posthumously, in the 4th issue of the journal Iskusstvo.
Among many booklets Rozanova illustrated were A Forestly Rapid (Bukh
lesinnyi), Explodity (Vzorval'), Let's Grumble (Vozropshchem),
A Duck's Nest of Bad Words (Utinoe
gnezdyshko durnykh slov) (all in 1913), Te
li le (1914), Transrational Pook (Zaumnaia gniga), War (Voina),
and Universal War (Vselenskaia voina)
(all in 1916). Te li le "represents Rozanova's attempt to interlace
verbal and pictorial elements. By using her own handwriting for the text,
Rozanova not only fused the words with the design, but she also presented the
text in a manner intended to convey mood and emotion" (The Avant-garde in
Russia, 242). The Universal War is illustrated with twelve abstract
collages. The collages consist of brightly colored polygonal shapes, arranged
in geometric patterns. The irregular jagged shapes recall those in Rozanova's
earlier abstract compositions. "The search for new connections between the
word and the pictorial image became one of the most important impulses of her
development" (Israel Museum).