Cubo-Futurism () was an art movement, developed within Russian Futurism, that arose in early 20th-century Russia, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo-Futurism was the main school of painting and sculpture practiced by the Russian Futurists. In 1913, the term "Cubo-Futurism" first came to describe works from members of the poetry group "Hylaeans", as they moved away from poetic Symbolism towards Futurism and zaum, the experimental "visual and sound poetry of Kruchenykh and Khlebninkov". Later in the same year the concept and style of "Cubo-Futurism" became synonymous with the works of artists within Russian post-revolutionary avant-garde circles as they interrogated non-representational art through the fragmentation and displacement of traditional forms, lines, viewpoints, colours, and textures within their pieces. The impact of Cubo-Futurism was then felt within performance art societies, with Cubo-Futurist painters and poets collaborating on theatre, cinema, and ballet pieces that aimed to break theatre conventions through the use of nonsensical zaum poetry, emphasis on improvisation, and the encouragement of audience participation (an example being the 1913 Futurist satirical tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky).
The coexistence of these differing strands of artistic practice within Cubo-Futurism reflects an ideological preoccupation with collective renewal and deconstruction (a notion born of their post-revolutionary context) with each poet or painter free to create their own aesthetic consciousness based on the concept of revolution and collective action through reinterpretation of artistic and social traditions.
Background
Importance of Post-Revolutionary context In the context of late Tsarist Russia, society was deeply divided by social class. Russian industrialisation, development, economic growth, and urbanisation fell far behind other Western nations, with the country experiencing high levels of illiteracy, poor health care, and struggling with the limitations of little mass communication outside larger cities. Looking outward at the realities of those from neighbouring countries, artists who would later become members of the Cubo-Futurist movement noticed the impacts of the burgeoning Machine Age on everyday life, recognising the beauty, dynamism, and energy of the utilitarian machine aesthetic leading to a renewed interest in technological modernisation within art, poetry, and life. Active in Russian art circles, Ukrainian-born Aleksandr Shevchenko (1883–1948) echoed this sentiment when, in 1913, he stated, "the world has been transformed into a single, monstrous, fantastic, perpetually-moving machine, into a single huge non-animal automatic organism… [this] cannot help but be reflected in our thinking and in our spiritual life: in Art". The "cult of the machine" became an increasingly utopic concept within Cubo-Futurist circles, with artists perceiving the idyllic phenomenon of machine production as the foremost "proletariat creation" due to its ability to help construct an equitable, collective life for all people regardless of class. This ideological conception of utopic perfection through machinery significantly impacted the stylistic elements of the Cubo-Futurist movement, influencing artists to experiment with pure abstraction, geometric shapes, harsh lines and planes, and the deconstruction of organic forms into powerful structures infused with machine symbolism.
Impact of Russian art collectors
At the top of early 20th century Russia’s deep social, political, and class divisions were a small group of elite aristocrats and businessmen. With considerable access to international art markets and dealers, they assembled significant number European masterpieces of the early 20th century for their own personal collections. Collectors and patrons, Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921), paid special attention to Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Fauvist, Cubist, and Futurist art from all over Europe amassing a large selection of momentous works, and consequently introducing local Russian artists to art movements, techniques, and styles popular around the continent. Shchukin’s collection included a considerable number of Picassos, Matisses, Cezannes, Monets, and Gauguins, thus allowing artists in St. Petersburg and Moscow access to Cubist and Futurist artworks that would later influence the development of the Cubo-Futurist movement.
'Hylea' and the impact of Marinetti's 'Futurist Manifesto
While Cubo-Futurism was first named and identified in 1913, the movement can be traced back to a congregation of Russian artists who called themselves Soyuz Molodyozhi ('Union of Youth') in 1910. The group was brought together by the Ukrainian-born poet and painter David Burliuk (1882–1967) under the name budetlyane (a Russian interpretation of the western term "futurists"), inspired by Italian Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's (1876–1944) 1909 Futurist Manifesto. Marinetti's work espoused the need for creatives (e.g. artists and writers) to abandon the past by moving towards the utilisation of the aesthetic language of machinery, industrialisation, urban living, and utilitarian design. For Marinetti and those that followed him, the futurist movement stood for freedom, collectivity, perfection, and social rejuvenation. Influenced by the Futurist Manifesto, the aesthetics of dislocation and fragmentation became the vocabulary of the Cubo-Futurists in their attempt to interrogate the tireless and repetitive dynamism of technology, and highlight their fantasies of a utopic mechanical modernity. The Cubo-Futurists combined the modernist, cosmopolitan spirit of Marinetti's futurism with the aesthetic characteristics of analytical cubism (e.g. abstracted forms, flatness, fragmentation, geometric shapes, muted and dark colours, combination of various viewpoints) in order to create their own didactic art form designed to display the revolutionary focus of the artistic community.
History Origin of the term
The term 'Cubo-Futurism' first appeared in a lecture in 1913, originally to refer to the poets who belonged to David and Vladimir Burliuk's literary group, 'Hylaea', also spelt 'Guilée' and 'Gylea'. This term was coined by Korney Chukovsky (1882–1969), a Russian art critic, in reference to the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Aleksey Kruchonykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, Benedict Livshits, and Vasily Kamensky, members of the Hylaea group. It was only after aforementioned poets began to display shocking public behaviour (for example wearing absurd clothes), when the writers and the movement in general began to be called simply 'Russian Futurism'. As a result, 'Cubo-Futurism' then began to refer to the artists who were influenced by Cubism and Futurism, though both terms still remain interchangeable.
Development of the movement
The earliest appearances of the Cubo-Futurist art style can be found in the works of Natalia Goncharova, who, as early as 1909, applied Cubist and Futurist means of expression in her paintings.
Thanks to modern technology (transport and telegraphy, for example) and the artists' experience of other countries, the creatives in Russia knew much about the avant-garde events in Europe. Cubo-Futurism as an art style would begin to take its full form in the years 1912 to 1913, though the style of poetry ended when Russian Futurism itself also faded.
One of the first major painters to become a Cubo-Futurist would be Kazimir Malevich, who entered his Cubo-Futurist phase in 1912–13; he termed the works he exhibited at the 1912 'Donkey's Tail' and 1913 'Target' exhibitions as being 'Cubo-Futurist'. For Malevich, Cubo-Futurism would be especially important, because it symbolised the connection between the stillness of conventional Cubism, and the dynamism inherent in Futurism. Rather than simply following the example of painting industrial scenes, set by the Futurists in Italy, or of painting in fairly flat colours, set by the Cubists in France, he placed heavy rural Russian themes on his work; this therefore led to his paintings of traditional village life in a bright, juxtaposing avant-garde style. An example of his Cubo-Futurist work is The Knifegrinder, painted circa 1912–1913.
Natalia Goncharova officially entered her Futurist stage in around 1912 to 1913; soon, Cubo-Futurist influences became apparent in her work. This was not, for her, a dramatic change in her previous style of painting. In 1913, an exhibition of her latest work was held at a Russian art gallery, which received a massive variety of responses. Mikhail Larionov followed suit in the latest avant-garde trend, by publishing two manifestos on his and Goncharova's new art movement, Rayonism, which was inspired by Cubo-Futurism.
Other Cubo-Futurist artists emerged, for example Aleksandra Ekster, who was involved in Russian Futurist stage design, and Lyubov Popova, who had learned of Cubism during her 1912 stay in Paris, and painted in the Cubo-Futurist style in the years 1913 to 1914. The movement in Russia was notable for having a large percentage of female painters, in contrast to the movement in Italy.
The Cubo-Futurists – both poets and artists – were also notable for their curious activities, both public and artistic: Mayakovsky wore a bright yellow jacket, Ilia Zdanevich ("Iliazd") and Burliuk painted on their faces, and some of the painters attached objects upon their canvases, in such manners that predated the Dada avant-garde movement based in Zurich, Berlin, and Paris, which would begin a few years later.
In 1913, the opera Victory over the Sun – prologue by Khlebnikov, libretti by Kruchenykh, and music by Mikhail Matyushin – was completed. The costume and set designer was Malevich; the opera has since become notable for starring the first appearance of his influential painting Black Square, as part of a design for a stage curtain. The next year, a Russian Futurist book was published: Tango with Cows, written by aviator-poet Vasily Kamensky and illustrated by the Burliuk brothers.
By 1914, the Russian Futurists (many of them Cubo-Futurist) developed a hostility to the Italians. When Marinetti went on a lecture tour of Russia in that year, he was met with general unfriendliness, contrary to the positive reception he had on his previous tour of 1910: Larionov had, for example, a serious argument with a pro-Marinetti cultural figure, the former wishing to greet him with rotten eggs and the latter with flowers, whereas the female Cubo-Futurist painters may have been put off by Marinetti's misogyny. The relations worsened to such an extent that Hylea began to fake the publication dates of their books, as though to state that they were earlier and more Futurist than their colleagues in Italy.
The Russian Futurists were also disgusted with the Ego-Futurists, a rival Russian literary association who had been formed in 1911 by the poet Igor Severyanin. This time, the negative feelings went both ways: Severyanin disapproved of the attitudes of the Cubo-Futurists, whilst they dismissed the Ego-Futurists as being immature, tasteless impostors.
End of Cubo-Futurism
By the year 1915, Cubism and Futurism both began to become exhausted for the painters; nevertheless, in 1915, the first all-Russian Futurist exhibition, called 'Tramway V', opened on March 3; organised by Ivan Puni, Vladimir Tatlin's works became the main focus, and the exhibition led to a succés de scandale. In 1916, another notable Cubo-Futurist book was published: Universal War, by Aleksei Kruchenykh, perhaps in collaboration with his wife Olga Rozanova.