Page 35 - Studio International - September 1973

line . . . heralds ot a new primitivism to which primitivism as a conscious style. Apart from contrived child-like quality of careless drawing
our modern painting has come.'1 contemporary Western European art the sources is evident in The Hairdresser (c. 1907). Sources
Members of the group varied greatly, having of their pictures lay in traditional Russian icon and style of these pictures were soon to
no fixed programme. Apart from French paintings, toys and lubki. The lubok is similar to influence poetry. The work of Chagall at this
Fauvism and Cubism exhibited in Russia before an English chap-book or the traditional popular time was developing from similar sources and
191o, primitivism came directly from Russian woodcuts produced in France and Germany. David Burliuk's Barber's Shop combines cubist
sources. Lubki date from the seventeenth century and forms with chap-book images.
History in the late nineteenth and early their subject matter was at first religious and In 1913 Pommada was published as a small
twentieth centuries was extended in range and later political, but they also represented such book of thirteen poems by Kruchenykh and
detail, mainly as a result of archaeological subjects as popular songs and the signs of the E. Lunev with illustrations by Larionov. The
discoveries revealing the pre-historic past. The zodiac. Goncharova was very probably cover-drawing of a barber was in a primitivist
old and new stone ages and the historic directly influenced by the theatre and icon style and inside illustrations are in Larionov's
sequence of their culture was established; the paintings through the Abramtsevo colony. By new rayonnist manner. Larionov's bawdy
literary history of early civilizations of Egypt about 1910 her works such as Dancing Peasants subjects between c. 1907 and c. 1913 are also
and Mesopotamia began to be read from and Haycutting directly influenced Malevich. typical of the mood of Russian literary and
contemporary documents and more was being Larionov described his work between about artistic 'Futurism' at that time. Imitation of
learned of the history of the civilizations of 19o2 and 1906 as impressionist, though it was children's art, folk imagery, epithets, street
India, the Far East and of the Americas. The more symbolist than the French school. Then language, words out of context, eroticism,
framework of events through which the present while doing military service, probably 1910- archaism, invented words and `trans-rational'
was shown to grow from the past owed much 1911,1 he spent winter months in the Moscow language (`zaum') typify the poetry and
also to the mid-nineteenth-century science of Kremlin and the summer in a field camp, and his manifestoes of 1912-14. Though painting was
anthropology. Restoration of ethnic and subject of soldiers dates from about this time, ahead of poetry generally, the two arts were
national styles in the nineteenth century, that marking the beginning of his primitivism.2 closely integrated and Larionov, Goncharova
stimulated Catalan poetry in Barcelona and the Some of his work of 1907-12, the years of and others illustrated poems and combined the
Celtic revival in Britain, corresponded to the transition from western European styles, two media. Igra v Adu (A Game in Hell)
return to Slavic sources in late nineteenth- resembles Matisse but more especially the appeared in 1912 illustrated by Goncharova and
century Russia, which led to the early German expressionists in their colour, crude it was republished in 1913 and illustrated by
twentieth-century primitivism in literature and line and subjects of bourgeois and street life Rozanova and Malevich. About the same time
painting derived from Russian folk art. such as Walk in a Provincial Town (c. 1907-8) Starinnaya Lyubov (Old Time Love)
By 1910 Larionov and Goncharova introduced and Evening after the Rain (c. 19o8). This appeared, illustrated mostly by Larionov. The

3 M. Larionov 5 M. Larionov 6 M. Larionov
Soldier on a Horse c. 1908-1r The Hairdresser 1907 Summer 1912
Tate Gallery, London Coll. Mme M. Larionov, Paris COIL Mme M. Larionov, Paris
4 K. Malevich 7 Picasso
The Bather Carafe and three bowls 1907
Coll. Gemeente Museum,
Amsterdam
81