KRUCHENYKH Alexey Eliseevich

February 21, 1886 (Olivsky, Kherson province) — June 17, 1968 (Moscow)

Graphic artist, poet, art and literary critic

Alexey Kruchenykh was born to a peasant family. He finished municipal three-year college in Kherson (1902). In 1902–1906 he studied in Odessa Art School. Kruchenykh worked as a teacher of drawing in the girls’ vocational school in Kherson (1906). In the same years he met the artist D. D. Burlyuk.

In 1907 he moved to Moscow. Kruchenykh worked as a caricaturist for the Budilnik (“Alarm”) magazine. He drew a series of travesties and caricatures of writers, scientists and artists All Moscow in Caricatures. In 1909 Kruchenykh participated in the art exhibition in St. Petersburg, where he got acquainted with E. G. Guro, M. V. Matyushin, and V. V. Kamensky.

In 1909 Krucheykh made his début as a prose writer, poet, newspaper satirist, essayist, art and literary critic. He published his literary works in Kherson newspaper Rodnoy Kray (“Native Land”) under his proper name or under pseudonym A. Gorelin.

Since 1910 Kruchenykh was an active member of the group Gileya (“Hylaea”). He wrote poems Game in Hell (1912, in co-authorship with V. V. Khlebnikov), Old-fashioned Love (1913); he took part in work on collection Slap in the Face of Public Taste (1913). Kruchenykh together with V. V. Mayakovsky published manifest of futurism with thesis “To Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy... Overboard From the Ship of Modernity”. Since early 1910s Kruchenykh developed the principles of Zaum (“Transration” or “Beyonsense”), he created experimental language, which was beyond the mind and consisted from unknown words. This theory was formulated in collection The Word as Such (1913, in co-authorship with Khlebnikov) and realized in the poetry Dyr, bul, shchyl.

Kruchenykh published the collections of Zaum poetry Mirskontsa (“Worldbackwards”; 1912, together with Khlebnikov), Vzorval (“Explodity”), Pomade (both — 1913), Te li le (1914, with Khlebnikov), War, Universal War (both — 1916); literature researches Vypyt Lyubvi Turgeneva (“Extort of Turgenev’s Love”), Chort i Rechetvortsy (“The Devil and the Speechmakers”; both — 1913), Stikhi Mayakovskogo. Vypyt (“Poetry by V. Mayakovsky. Extort”; 1914). Kruchenykh wrote the opera Victory Over the Sun to music by Matyushin (1913). Kruchenykh designed a lot of futuristic editions; in particular he created illustrations, prints, and designs of covers.

In 1915, after breakup of the group Gileya (“Hylaea”) and because of beginning of the First World War, the artist moved to the Caucasus. He worked as a teacher of drawing in the women’s gymnasium in Batalpashinsk. Since 1916 Kruchenykh lived in Tiflis. He took an active part in artistic and literary group Syndicate of Futurists in 1916–1917. Kruchenykh founded the group of futurists 41° (“41 degrees”) in 1918. In 1919 he moved from Tiflis to Baku, worked as a poster artist in the Windows of ROSTA (the Russian Telegraph Agency) in Baku.

In 1921 Kruchenykh returned to Moscow. In 1923 he joined the group Left Front of the Arts (LEF). The artist published the collections Phonetics of the Theatre, Displacement of  Russian Verse (1922), Texture of the Word, Apocalypse in Russian Literature (both — 1923). Kruchenykh worked on the collection Fifteen Years of Russian Futurism.1912–1927.Material and Commentary (1927). The last artist’s book Devices of Lenin’s Speech was published in 1928; later his books were only in typewritten version.

During the Great Patriotic War, Kruchenykh stayed in Moscow, worked for the Windows of TASS (the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union).

Works by Alexey Kruchenykh are in many museum collections.