Pavel Filonov - Russian avant-garde artist

Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov (January 8, 1883 – December 3, 1941) was a Russian avant-garde painter, art theorist, and poet. Filonov was born in Moscow on January 8, 1883 (Gregorian calendar) or December 27, 1882 (Julian calendar). In 1897, he moved to St. Petersburg where he took art lessons. In 1908, he entered St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, from which, he was expelled in 1910.
In 1910–1914, he took part in the arts group Soyuz Molodyozhi created by artists Elena Guro and Mikhail Matyushin. In 1912, he wrote the article The Canon and the Law, in which, he formulated the principles of analytical realism, or "anti-Cubism". According to Filonov, Cubism represents objects using elements of their surface geometry but "analytical realists" should represent objects using elements of their inner soul. He was faithful to these principles for the remainder of his life. During the years 1913 to 1915, Filonov was close to Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, and other futurists. He co-illustrated Khlebnikov's Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 alongside Kazimir Malevich during this time. In the autumn of 1916, he enlisted for service in World War I, and served on the Romanian front. Filonov participated actively in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and served as the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Committee of Dunay region.In 1919, he exhibited in the First Free Exhibit of Artists of All Trends at the Hermitage. In 1923, he became a professor of St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and a member of the Institute for Artistic Culture . He organized a large arts school of Masters of Analytical Realism (over seventy artists). Their work influenced suprematism and expressionism.
In 1929, a large retrospective exhibition of Filonov art was planned at the Russian Museum; however, the Soviet government forbade the exhibition from going forward. From 1932 onward, Filonov literally starved but still refused to sell his works to private collectors. He wanted to give all his works to the Russian Museum as a gift so as to start a Museum of Analytical Realism. He died of starvation on December 3, 1941 during the Nazi Siege of Leningrad. Under the umbrella of Universal Flowering, Filonov put forth a manner of working that proceeded from the particular to the general. He believed that objects and fields should be built up from small details and bits and stated that doing it the other-way-round was nothing short of "charlatanism". To this end, he worked, and required his students to work, with very small brushes in painting and the finest of points when drawing. Wikipedia

Russian Art Aristarkh Lentulov

Aristarkh Lentulov was born in 1882 in the town of Nizhny Lomov, near Penza. His father, a rural priest, died just two years later, survived by his wife and four children. Lentulov was educated first at the religious school at Penza (where drawing became his favorite hobby) and, later, at the local seminary. Although the family struggled financially, when Penza Art College opened in 1898, he enrolled. After two years of study, he moved nearly 750 miles west to study at the Kiev School of Art, where he took a particular interest in the portrayal of light and color in painting. He later left the school with a group of like-minded student artists who wanted to find a better way to develop their styles away from traditional techniques and styles.

Lentulov failed to pass his entrance exams at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1907, but his bold style and his confidence in his work caught the attention of others, including artist, illustrator, and stage designer Dmitry Kardovsky. For two years, Lentulov studied in Kardovsky’s private studio in St. Petersburg. He went on to study at the Académie de la Palette and at the studio of Henri Le Fauconnier in Paris. Although he experimented with Fauvism, Post-Impressionism, and Cubism, Lentulov developed his own distinctive, colorful, Futurist-influenced style that earned the nickname “Futurist a la Russe” (The Russian Futurist) amongst his Parisian contemporaries. He is often credited with initiating the Russian art movement of Cubo-Futurism.(www.artinrussia.org)

Russian avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova

Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova (21 June 1886 – 7 November 1918, Moscow) was a Russian avant-garde artist in the styles of Suprematism, Neo-Primitivism, and Cubo-Futurism.Olga Rozanova was born in Melenki, a small town near Vladimir.
In 1904 she attended art studios of K. Bolshakov and Konstantin Yuon in Moscow. The same time she studied at the Stroganov School of Applied Art.
In 1911 she became one of the most active members of the Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of the Youth).

 In 1912 Rozanova started a friendship with the Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh, her future husband.In 1916 she married Kruchenykh and joined the group of Russian avant-garde artists Supremus that was led by Kazimir Malevich. By this time her paintings, developed from the influences of Cubism and Italian Futurism, and took an entirely original departure into pure abstraction in which the composition is organised by the visual weight and relationship of colour.

In the same year Rozanova together with other suprematist artists (Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Nina Genke, Liubov Popova, Ksenia Boguslavskaya, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Ivan Kliun, Ivan Puni and others) worked at the Verbovka Village Folk Centre.
In 1917–1918 she created a series of non-objective paintings which she called tsv'etopis'. Her Non-objective composition, 1918 also known as Green stripe anticipates the flat picture plane and poetic nuancing of colour of some Abstract Expressionists. Rozanova's works spanned a wide range of artistic movements in Russia, from Suprematism to Cubo-Futurism.Wikipedia