David Burliuk

David Burliuk was the founder of the first artistic futurist group. His name was virtually a synonym with the most radical artistic movements of the 1920s.

In typical avant-garde art fashion, Davyd Burliuk expressed this genre's and epoch's character in his own appearance. In a topper, with a horse or a bird drawn on his face and one eye made of glass, he would leave a lasting visual impression, both in his art and his looks.

By different estimates,  in all, Burliuk created up to 30000 paintings. He had been practicing various genres, but his leading futuristic style was cubism. Here you can see one of Burliuk's creations of this genre – Time, 1918–1919.

In 1912, Burliuk together with other artists and thinkers, published one of the fundamental futuristic manifestos – A Slap in the Face of Public Taste. Futurism artists declared their desire to break off with the past, not look at the old classics and boldly head to the future.

Treasuring his Ukrainian roots, Davyd Burliuk used to call himself the "native of the Ukrainian steppe." He once wrote: "I am mainly interested in Ukrainian folk art and archaeology, and everything connected to Zaporizhzhia and the free Ukrainian Cossacks, of whom I descend."