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ROZANOVA, Olga Vladimirovna (1886-1918).
Born in Melenka, in the province of Vladimir. She attended art studios
of K. Bolshakov, K. Yuon, the Stroganov School of Applied Art in
Moscow (1904-1910), and the private school of E.N. Zvantseva in
Petersburg (1911). Member of the organizations Union of Youth (since
1911) and the Supremus (1916). Exhibited at the International
Exhibition of Free Futurists in Rome (1914), Tram B, 0.10 (both in
Petrograd, 1915), The Jack of Hearts (Moscow, 1916, 1917), Magazin
(Moscow, 1916) and many others. In 1918, she worked for the IZO
Narkompros (Arts Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education)
and the Proletcult. Died in Moscow of diphtheria.
A painter and a graphic artist. One of the most talented and original
masters of the Russian avant-garde. Her works reflected all the latest
searches by the pioneers of the avant-garde (Neo-Impressionism,
Neo-Primitivism, Fauvism, Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism). One of the
authors of the Union of Youth Manifesto, illustrated the books of the
Russian Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Alexei Kruchenykh.
Showed interest for the folk art.
Her creative experimental spirit peaked in the book illustrations of
Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova. It was as if she picked up the slack from
Goncharova who illustrated her last lithographic book in 1913.
Rozanova became the most active participant at many futurist editions
ever since. An artist who was not less talented than Goncharova, a
talented painter and graphic artist, Rozanova was still waiting for
her discovery. Little was written about her and a long time ago. In
1912, after she had mover from Moscow to Petersburg, Rozanova entered
the Union of Youth and exhibited her works at its exhibitions. At the
same time she took to illustrating books.
In the first books of Rozanova there is still some dependency from
Goncharova, for instance, on the cover of A Forestly Rapid (Bukh
Lesinnyi) (1913). The animals depicted there remind by their
quirkiness Goncharova’s ones from her collection «Mirskontsa». In the
second publication «Games in the Hell» (Igry V Adu) (1914) this
dependency grows into an imitation up to the repetition of mistakes
from her first publication, and the Rozanova’s pictures were also
placed near the inside margin of the page. The pictures show the
variety in the strange world of demons, witches and monsters which
Goncharova revealed in the first edition of her book. Only the
Malevich’s cover gives the book a unique, memorable look. Yet even
these first books have pictures performed with Rozanova’s plastic
energy. Such was the Explosion (Vzryv) from the collection of
Kruchenykh Explodity (Vzorval’, 1913), a very dynamic one, built on a
violent, strong-willed collision of the black and white which was so
characteristic of the artist’s works.
Her most important illustrated collection was A Duck’s Nest of Bad
Words (Utinoe Gnezdyshko durnykh slov) (1913) in which she did not
follow any artist, raising the issues which had not been put by anyone
before, and revealing for an illustrator a totally new field of art.
In A Duck’s Nest colours play a particular role. Black pictures and a
hand written text were printed on a grey paper. Not only
illustrations, but text pages were also painted. It was as if Rozanova
was giving a colourful score of poems with a focus on page
illustrations where a colour and a pictorial image dominate.
The artist was herself quite an enthusiastic poet and at times she
would fear to be totally absorbed by her poetry, «My poetry took me so
far’, she wrote to Kruchenykh, ‘that I start getting worried for my
painting… What if I might suddenly switch from painting to poetry?»
In 1916, Rozanova in co-authorship with Kruchenykh made a sketchbook
War (Voina) with engraved illustrations. Unfortunately only a few
texts by Kruchenykh were engraved on linoleum, the remaining were
typographically printed. The title and the theme remind of the
Goncharova’s lithographic sketchbook Mystical Images of War («Misticheskiye
Obrazy Voiny») issued in 1914, but that was only an affinity. In the
engravings in this book there is not a hint to stylization which was
strongly present the pages of the Goncharova’s sketchbook. Rozanova’s
War is a deeply authentic, innovative book which has no analogue in
the west. Khardjiev reports that the artist considered this edition
her best achievement in the art of printing.
A monumentally designed cover of the book was performed by Rozanova by
using the lynoengraving (text) and collage (coloured suprematic
stickers) Rozanova was the first artist who widely used collage in an
artistic design of the book. In one of the illustrations to
Transrational (zaumnaia) poems by Kruchenykh – Airplanes over the City
(Aeroplany Nad Gorodom) – the artist blended in a single composition
the lynoengravings depicting airplanes, a falling aviator and
non-objective colour blendings. All this was glued onto the grey
cardboard sheet. Her blendings grow into complex collages, and a
synthetic image emerges full of emotional tension because of its
active colour inclusions contrasting with the black and white
engravings. The bright blue sticker leaves in the subconsciousness an
impression of a sky in which airplanes are floating. The purple colour
gives the same emotional imaginative aspect, being partly overlapped
by the black circle of the sticker as if by the dark sun. Although
there is a «danger» in trying to translate into words the effect of
these collages which is only suggestive and actually ineffable, but it
is them that incorporate the engravings into some new and supreme
imaginative synthese. Likewise, it is hard to convey a feeling of
spaciousness which causes blending in one image of non-objective and
figurative elements. This particular feature anticipates the
impression of later post-suprematic boards by Malevich or Matyushin’s
paintings in which specific and natural are blended with
non-objective. A sensitive artist, Rozanova is like a barometer which
foretells a late change of weather. This engravings cycle by Rozanova
was a protest against the world slaughter, a denial of militarism
proving how disgusted were the Russian Futurists by the cult of war as
the «world hygiene» advocated by Marinetti. In many aspects Rozanova
had anticipated that interpretation of images of contemporary war
which was encountered later works of art, such as Guernica by Picasso… |
