Cubo Futurist Compositions

This rare notebook, offering a wonderful collection of Zdanevich's graphic styles - from his Cubo Futurist monochromatic exercises to the pyrotechnic explosion of his Cubist still-lifes - was given as a present by the artist to his wife Vailinka in December 1915. Bearing witness of the multifarious influences inspiring the young avant-garde artist (from Larionov's Rayism to Malevich's Cubo-Futurism, to Cézanne's Cubism ante litteram and French contemporary developments in modern art), this work is a tribute to the extraordinary creative strength of Kirill Zdanevich, a pioneer in modernist Russia. Together with his brother Ilya, he was at the very heart of the development of the '41 Degrees', a pivotal movement of avant-gardism, founded in Saint Petersbourg in 1916. A form of poetic school born in reaction to the 'modernist' poets, the '41 Degrees' moved to Tiflis, in Georgia, in 1917. Tiflis became the lieu d'élection for the most famous Russian Futurists, and a number of Georgian and Armenian artists, who found there a climate conducive to free expressionism. The brother Zdanevich's aesthetic revolution was exported by Ilya, who moved to Paris in 1921 and settled in with Larionov, meeting Russian émigrés as well as Picasso, Robert Delaunay and the Dadaists. Picasso was particularly influenced by his typographical experiments, and produced several illustrated books with his collaboration, published by the 'Quarante-et-un degrés'.