Horse-Lightning
1907
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Location in museum
The Benois Wing,
Room 75
Open the panorama of the hall in the virtual tour
- Period Early 20th century
- CategoryAbstraction, Animal Painting
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Horses were the heroes of David Burliuk’s early avant-garde period, accompanying his painting as it evolved from Neo-Primitivism to Futurism. This animal was not, however, linked to the traditional images encountered in Russian songs and ballads or the poetry of the troika. Like many of the members of the Hylæa group, Burliuk was enchanted by the free, natural and elemental nature of the animal, evoking associations with the ancient Scythian civilisation that had once inhabited the steppe country to the north of the Black Sea. Horse-Lightning was one of the works in which this experimental artist outraged the conservative public. The flat and formula-like image of the horse is excluded from the real passage of life (symbolised by a blue tree) and placed in a setting of coloured planes The whimsical, intersecting combinations of the planes evoke the illusion of depth and light-aerial vibration.