Article

Name: “To the Keeper of the Ufimian Museum...” The Letter by D. D. Burlyuk to A. A. Cherdantsev August 3, 1923. New York

Authors: Yu. S. Podlubnova

Institute for History and Archaeology of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences; Museum “Literary Life of the Ural of 20th Century”; Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation

In the section Archival materials and publications

Abstract:

The letter from the poet, the founder of Russian futurism David Davidovich Burliuk (1882– 1967) was written on August 3 of 1923. His addressee was Aleksander Alekseevich Cherdantsev (1871–1943). The letter is kept in the collection of the writer, local historian and a collector of documentary materials Alexander Kuzmich Scharts (1906–1986) in the Ural Writers Museum. The content of the letter is associated with a famous episode of the biography of David Burliuk, his lfe in 1915–1918 in the village of Buzdak near Ufa. Here he created more than 200 paintings. Also he was the active member of the Ufa art circle (1913–1918) at the provincial museum (he communicated with local artists, organized exhibitions). In 1918 Burliuk traveled from Siberia, then emigrated first to Japan (1920) and then to the USA (1922). His paintings remained in Buzdyak. Some of them after 1918 ended up in museums (mainly the Ufa Art Museum) while the other part was scattered. The fate of the abandoned paintings was worried Burliuk. He established correspondence with A. A. Cherdantsev and then replaced him as director of the museum Ylius Yulievich Blumenthal (“My dear, old, but forever young friend, David Burliuk!” Moscow, 2018). Obviously this letter was only a bit in the correspondence which was conducted in 1923.

The letter is important for determining the degree of involving of the poet and the emigrant artist in the cultural life of Ufa and more broadly the Soviet Union in the 1920s. This demonstrates his attitude to his own artistic heritage. The letter in an allows to reconstruct some contexts that were not disclosed in the previously published correspondence of Burliuk.

Keywords: correspondence, David Burliuk, Ufa Museum of Art, Ufa artists, Alexander Cherdantsev, Alexander Sharts

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