Ivan Albertovich Puni (also known as Jean Pougny; 3 April 1890 – 28 December 1956) was a Russian avant-garde (Suprematist, Cubo-Futurist) and French artist, who intensively changed his style until it went into lyric Primitivism in the direction of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard.

Biography

Early life

Ivan Puni was born in Kuokkala (then Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, now Repino, a part of St. Petersburg in Russia). It was long believed that Ivan Puni was born in 1892 or 1894 until his birth certificate was found in 2019 in a St. Petersburg archive, showing his birth date as 22 March 1890 (old style). He was the grandson of an eminent Italian composer of ballet music, Cesare Pugni. His father, a cellist, proposed him a military career, but Ivan instead decided to become a painter.

Career

Puni continued 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 married fellow artist Xenia Boguslavskaya, and 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 with the outbreak of WWI. At this point, he began painting in a Cubist style reminiscent of Juan Gris. In 1915, Puni organized the exhibitions Tramway V and 0.10, both held in St Petersburg, in which Malevich, Tatlin, Aleksandra Ekster, Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Boguslavskaya and others participated, and to which Puni contributed constructions, readymades, 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.

Years of exile

Puni and his wife, Xenia Boguslavskaya, emigrated from Russia in 1920 (end of January), first to Finland, then to Berlin, where his solo exhibition was held at the Galerie der Sturm (February 1920). While in Berlin, Puni also designed costumes and sets for theatrical productions, and published a theoretical book Modern Painting. Puni and Boguslavskaya relocated to Paris in 1923, where he carried on with development of his style, which experienced several metamorphoses until it stabilized at approximately 1943 to a variant of Post-Impressionism or lyric Primitivism in the direction of Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. In France he became "Jean Pougny" and in 1947 obtained French citizenship. He died in Paris in 1956.

Literature

Exhibitions