David Burliuk

(1882 - 1967)

2712

M. Maksimova

Песни победы

Victory songs

New York: Komtet Pobeda, 1947

202 x 136 mm. 126 pages 

Edition: unknown.

After his move from Japan Burliuk first lived in New York City on Harrison Avenue. In 1929 he moved down town to be near the school of his two sons, Davy and Nick. His initial success in the New York art world faded away and when the Economic Crises came in 1929 it also hit the Burliuk family. Even though it was difficult to make ends meet Burliuk never ceased to promote his ideas, his art and that of his friends (see nr. 124). By the end of the 1930s he had found a new audience and had gotten involved with a new gallery; from 1942 till 1966 the ACA Gallery would organize his exhibitions in New York almost annually. The new style of painting, a reworked primitivism in which people appear as doll or puppet like figures executed in vibrant impasto colours reflecting the work of the impressionists, gained him a permanent audience of art collectors. The cover for this collection of poetry, published privately in April 1947, shows farmers in Burliuk’s typical style beneath a flag of the Soviet-Union. His closeness to the Soviet Union and the friends remaining there could already be seen in 1927 when he applied for membership of the Soviet Union of Writers. The poems in this book celebrate the glory and heroism of the Mother Russia in four cycles: War, Victory, Motherland and America. This copy is inscribed by the author: ‘To the great Russian artist and poet, friend, comrade, and advisor, for his wonderful cover which adorns this collection, to David Davidovich Burliuk’. It is the last cover that Burliuk designed for a book. In 1950 he moved with his wife to Hampton Bays, Long Island, where he had purchased a property. There he lived and worked and there he died.

References:

K. Dreier, 1944, p...