Rozanova, Olga Vladimirovna

Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova, Rozanova also spelled Rosanova, (born June 22 [July 4, New Style], 1886, Melenki, Vladimir oblast, Russia—died Nov. 8, 1918, Moscow), Russian artist who was one of the main innovators of the Russian avant-garde. By the time of her death in 1918, she had embraced in her painting the use of pure colour, a concern that engaged American abstract artists, such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, several decades later, in the 1950s.

Rozanova was born into a family of provincial aristocrats. Drawn to all that was new in art, she moved to Moscow, where she tried to enroll in the Stroganov Central Industrial Art Institute and audited classes in other art schools. Although she did not receive a formal art education, by 1910 she was already making a name for herself in avant-garde art circles in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In 1911 she joined the Union of Youth group in St. Petersburg and participated in all its exhibitions (exclusively until 1913). She also participated in the debates organized by the group and published in its journal (the third issue) the programmatic article “The Bases of the New Creation and the Reasons Why It Is Misunderstood.”

During 1913 and 1914, Rozanova, like other Russian avant-garde artists, upheld Cubo-Futurist ideals, but her paintings reveal a rigorous study of Italian sources. Of all the Russian artists of the era, Rozanova was the most interested in and the most identified with Italian Futurism, as can be seen in Fire in the City and The City (both 1913–14). It was not surprising that Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the ideological founder of the Italian Futurist movement, was particularly impressed with her work during his 1914 visit to Russia.

The poet Aleksey Kruchonykh (Kruchenykh) was to have a major influence on Rozanova’s life. They met in 1912 and soon began a creative and romantic relationship. Kruchonykh introduced Rozanova to “trans-sense,” or zaum poetry, the name of a type of linguistic sound experiment then popular among Futurists, and she began writing accomplished poetry in that style, as well as illustrating books by Kruchonykh and Velimir Khlebnikov (Vzorval, “Explodity”; Vozropshchem, “Let’s Grumble”; and Bukh lesiny, “A Forestly Rapid” in 1913 and Igra v adu “A Game in Hell” and Chort i rechetvortsy, “The Devil and the Word Makers” in 1914). From her coauthorship with Kruchonykh was born a distinctive genre of Futurist book: samopismo, a lithographic book in which the illustration and handwritten text are integrated on the page.

Rozanova created a distinctive variation of transrational poetry in her painting (doubtless under the influence of Kazimir Malevich) and produced an energetic and original series of compositions, including Pub (1914) and Workbox (1915).

The pinnacle of Rozanova’s figurative period was her famous Playing Card series, which combines a gallery of portraits of her contemporaries with a collection of playing card symbols and signs.

In 1916 Rozanova joined the Suprematists (see Suprematism; a short-lived group founded by Malevich), though she retained her own distinctive style, which was more dynamic and decorative than that of Malevich, and her interest in Suprematism was brief. In 1917, shortly before her sudden death from diphtheria, she created a series of what she termed “colour painting” compositions, a new direction in abstract art, which would be developed more than 30 years later by a group of artists known as Abstract Expressionists.