Aleksei Morgunov

Aleksei Morgunov was born on October 21 in 1884 in Moscow, Russian Empire.

Entered the Imperial Stroganov Central School of Industrial Art, where he studied intermittently; graduated from it only in 1909. At the same time, he studied at private studio-workshops of Konstantin Korovin and Sergey Ivanov.

Was admitted to the association “Moscow Association of Artists”; began to participate in exhibitions; attended the intellectual salon of Konstantin Kracht. Alexey’s debut took place at the 24th Periodical Exhibition at the Moscow Historical Museum, where he presented his painting “Forest”.

He went on an educational trip to Europe; visited Germany, France, Italy, studied modern art; became interested in Manet, the Fauvists and Cubism.

He left the association of the Moscow Association of Artists. Rented a workshop on Ostozhenka, known as “Morgunovka”, which became a kind of club and meeting place for left-wing creators and a “free academy” for sessions with nature. He joined the group of M. Larionov and became one of the 37 participants in the first exhibition of the Jack of Diamonds group. He created an exhibition poster for the group but did not become a key figure of it.

The artist was also a member of the Genesis group, was one of the masters who worked in the style of cubofuturism and abstract art and separated from “the jacks”; entered the independent group “Donkey’s tail”, participated in its single exhibition. His main idea was to unite the latest European art movements with traditions of Russian folk primitive art (lubok, icon painting). In the same year, he became a member and permanent exhibitor of the “Youth Union”.

He became one of the closest associates of Malevich. Together with him and Ivan Kliun, he founded a style called “Februaryism”. The aesthetic fundamentals and ideology were not formulated – they simply proclaimed “the rejection of the rational”, “disincarnating” of all art, up to the negation of the painting itself and the use of gestures and actions (the friends organized a “parade of futurists” among the bourgeois public, walking with red wooden spoons inserted in the buttonholes jackets, which the newspapers wrote about).

Participated in the avant-garde exhibitions “Tram B” and “Shop” (the latter was organized in St. Petersburg by Tatlin), later exhibited his paintings at the “Moscow Salon” – an association of painters that represented various art movements.

He was a member of the board of the Fine Arts of the People’s Commissariat of Education; the artist began to teach as a professor of painting at the First Free State Art Workshops. Participated in the Fifth State Exhibition of paintings in Moscow.

Worked in various commissions of the People’s Commissariat for Education, became a member of the Proletcult and was a member of the Objective Analysis group at the Institute of art culture. Quite suddenly left the avant-garde groups and turned to Fauvism, Neoclassicism and Realism.

Morgunov’s works were shown at exhibitions of Soviet art in Berlin, a few years later they were presented in the show “Contemporary art of Soviet Russia” (New York, 1929). In the last decade of his career, he painted pictures devoted Dneprostroy, oil pipelines and other events in the style of post-impressionism and realism.

Participated in the anniversary exhibition “Artists of the RSFSR for 15 years”. Several of his paintings were reproduced on postcards by the publishing house of the Society of Moscow Artists, of which Morgunov was a member until the end of his life.

Aleksei Morgunov died in the year of his fiftieth birthday, a little earlier than Malevich.