PRIMITIVISM

Primitivism in music rarely suggests lack of conventional

technique. Rather, it seeks to express ideas or images
related to antiquity or to some "primitive" culture or
attitude. Primitivism can also be understood as a late
development of 19th century nationalism.
IGOR
STRAVINSKY
Igor Stravinsky, in full Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky,
(born June 5 [June 17, New Style], 1882, Oranienbaum
[now Lomonosov], near St. Petersburg, Russia—died
April 6, 1971, New York, New York, U.S.), Russian-
born composer whose work had a revolutionary impact
on musical thought and sensibility just before and
after World War I, and whose compositions remained a
touchstone of modernism for much of his long working
life.

He was honoured with the Royal Philharmonic Society

Gold Medal in 1954 and the Wihuri Sibelius Prize in
1963.
ALEKSANDR SHEVCHENKO
From 1890 to 1898, he took private drawing lessons
from Dmytro Bezperchy and was employed by a workshop
that produced theater sets. He then moved to Moscow
and entered the Stroganov State Academy of Arts and
Industry; graduating in 1907. That same year, he was
admitted to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture
and Architecture, where he studied with Valentin
Serov and Konstantin Korovin.

In between, from 1905 to 1906, he spent some time in

Paris at the Académie Julian with Étienne Dinet and
Jean-Paul Laurens. He also made the acquaintance of
Mikhail Larionov and his followers. Under their
influence, he worked in the Neo-Primitivist and,
later, Rayonist styles. He was expelled from the
school in 1909.
KAZIMIR MALEVICH
Kazimir Malevich, in full Kazimir Severinovich Malevich,
(born February 23 [February 11, Old Style], 1878, near
Kyiv, Russian Empire [now in Ukraine]—died May 15,
1935, Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg,
Russia]), avant-garde painter who was the founder of the
Suprematist school of abstract painting.

Malevich, who was born to parents of Polish origin,

studied drawing in Kyiv and then attended the Stroganov
School in Moscow and the Moscow School of Painting,
Sculpture, and Architecture. In his early work he
followed Impressionism as well as Symbolism and Fauvism,
and, after a trip to Paris in 1912, he was influenced by
Pablo Picasso and Cubism. As a member of the Jack of
Diamonds group, he led the Russian Cubist movement.
MIKHAIL Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov, (born June 3 [May 22,
LARIONOV old style], 1881, Tiraspol, near Odessa, Russia—died
May 11, 1964, Paris), Russian-born French painter and
stage designer, a pioneer of pure abstraction in
painting, most notably through his founding, with
Natalya Goncharova, whom he later married, of the
Rayonist movement (c. 1910).
Larionov’s early work was influenced by Impressionism
and Symbolism, but with the painting Glass (1909) he
introduced a nonrepresentational style conceived as a
synthesis of Cubism, Futurism, and Orphism. In the
Rayonist manifesto of 1913, he asserted the principle
of the reduction of form in figure and landscape
compositions into rays of reflected light.
Both Larionov and Goncharova participated in the first
Jack of Diamonds exhibition of avant-garde Russian art
in Moscow in 1910. In 1914 they moved to Paris, where
both achieved renown as designers for Serge
Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.
NATALYA GONCHAROVA

Natalya Goncharova, Russian Nataliya Sergeyevna

Goncharova, Goncharova also spelled Gontcharova, (born
June 4, 1881, Nagayevo, Russia—died October 17, 1962,
Paris, France), innovative Russian painter, sculptor,
and stage designer who was a founder, with Mikhail
Larionov, of Rayonism (c. 1910) and was a designer for
the Ballets Russes. In the 21st-century art market,
Goncharova’s paintings brought some of the highest
prices for works by women artists.
The daughter of an aristocratic family, Goncharova
studied painting and sculpture at the Moscow School of
Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. After an early
preoccupation with sculpture, she met Larionov and
shifted her focus to painting. In 1910 she was a
founding member of the Jack of Diamonds avant-garde
artists group in Moscow.
PAVEL FILONOV
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.
MARC CHAGALL
Marc Chagall, (born July 7, 1887, Vitebsk, Belorussia,
Russian Empire [now in Belarus]—died March 28, 1985,
Saint-Paul, Alpes-Maritimes, France), Belorussian-born
French painter, printmaker, and designer who composed
his images based on emotional and poetic associations,
rather than on rules of pictorial logic.

Predating Surrealism, his early works, such as I and

the Village (1911), were among the first expressions
of psychic reality in modern art. His works in various
media include sets for plays and ballets, etchings
illustrating the Bible, and stained-glass windows.
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