David Davidovich Burliuk, 1882-1967

New York, D.B.Newman Gallery, Exhibition of Recent Works by David Burliuk, 27 December 1924 - 13 January 1925, Cat. No. 16

N.Evdaev, David Burliuk v Amerike, Moscow: Nauka, 2002, illustrated in colour plate 2

Original canvas. There is a layer of light surface dirt and fine lines of craquelure in places. UV light reveals no signs of retouching. Held in a modern wood frame and unexamined out of frame.
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In the Church was painted during the two years David Burliuk lived and worked in Japan, producing works like The Japanese Fisherman (1921) (fig.1), and further developing the technique he used in Heads (1911). The subject is traditional, despite being executed in an innovative Futurist style. This is a device used by many avant-garde artists of the period, such as the Salon Cubists. Burliuk enjoyed painting scenes from his childhood, and such nostalgia-inspired pieces introduced a certain subtlety into his art that is untypical of Futurism. A network of black lines links the three ecclesiastical figures together, rendering the subject more comprehensible and delineating their forms. Volume is unimportant here, as they are not modelled with a conventional use of light and shade, but instead by modulations and variations of colour. The lines echo, repeat and reflect each other throughout the painting, recalling the works of the Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla, such as Vitesse d'une automobile (1913). Balla was one of the artists inspired by the recent discovery of chronophotography, exploring it in their art by repeating forms to suggest the motion of items through space. Burliuk employed this inspired technique to create a work that appears as innovative and fresh now as it was to his contemporaries.