Ivan Puni

Ivan Puni or Puny (Jean Pougny, Russian: Иван Пуни; 1894 or 1892 – 1956) was a Russian avant-garde artist (Suprematist, Cubo-Futurist).

Ivan Puni was born in Kuokkala (then Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, now Repino in Russia) to a family of Italian origins. He is the grandson of an eminent Italian composer of ballet music, Cesare Pugni.

Puni received his formal training in Paris in 1910-11 at the Académie Julien and other schools, where he painted in a derivative fauviste style. Upon his return to Russia in 1912, he met, and exhibited with, members of the St Petersburg avant-garde, including Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. He made a second trip to Paris in 1914, returning to St. Petersburg in 1915. At this point, he began painting in a Cubist style reminiscent of Juan Gris. In 1915, Puni, (Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, Ksenia Boguslavskaya, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Nina Genke and others) formed Supremus, a group of artists dedicated to the promulgation of Suprematism, the abstract art movement founded by Malevich. Malevich and Puni co-authored the Suprematist Manifesto, published in 1916, which proclaimed a new, abstract art for a new historical era. Puni also organized the exhibitions Tramway 5 and 0.10, both held in St Petersburg in 1915, in which Malevich, Tatlin, Popova and others participated, and to which Puni contributed constructions and paintings. In 1915-1916 Puni, together with other Suprematist artists, worked at Verbovka Village Folk Centre. In 1919, he taught at the Vitebsk Art School under Marc Chagall.

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