Olga Rozanova, Illustration to the book by Aleksei Kruchenykh
Duck's Nest
Olga Vladimirovna Rosanova (also spelled Rozanova) (Ольга Владимировна Розанова) (1886-7 November 1918, Moscow) was a Russian avant-garde artist in the styles of Suprematist, Neo-Primitivist, and Cubo-Futurist.
She was born in Melenki, a small town near Vladimir. In 1904 she attended art studios of K. Bolshakov and Konstantin Yuon in Moscow. The same time she studied at the Stroganov School of Applied Art. In 1911 she became one of the most active members of the Union of the Youth (Sojus Molod'ozhi). In 1912 Rozanova started a friendship with the Futurist poets Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh, her future husband.
In 1916, she joined the group of Russian avant-garde artists Supremus that was led by Kazimir Malevich. By this time her paintings, developed from the influences of Cubism and Italian Futurism, and took an entirely original departure into pure abstraction in which the composition is organised by the visual weight and relationship of colour.
In the same year Rozanova together with other suprematist artists (Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Nina Genke, Liubov Popova, Ksenia Boguslavskaya , Nadezhda Udaltsova, Ivan Kliun, Ivan Puni and others) worked at the Verbovka Village Folk Centre.
In 1917-1918 she created a series of non-objective paintings which she called tsv'etopis'. Her Non-objective composition, 1918 also known as Green stripe anticipates the flat picture plane and poetic nuancing of colour of some Abstract Expressionists.
