Elena Guro

Elena Genrikhovna Matyushina (; []; January 10, 1877 – May 6, 1913 ) was a Russian Futurist painter, playwright, poet, and fiction writer. Her career spanned the transitional period between Russian Symbolism and Futurism. She was also the only female member of the most influential Futurist group called Cubo-Futurism.

Early life Guro was born in St. Petersburg on January 10, 1877.

Career

From 1890 to 1893 she studied art at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in St Petersburg. From 1903 to 1905 she studied in the private studio of Jan Ciągliński where she met her future husband Mikhail Matyushin (they were married in 1906). One year previously, in 1904, she illustrated the Russian translation of a book of fairy tales by the French writer George Sand. In 1906 she and Matyushin moved to the art school of Elizaveta Zvantseva, where Guro worked under Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Léon Bakst and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin. She also contributed to the second volume of Trap for Judges in 1913. Guro and her husband subsidized both issues. In 1911 Guro's manuscript of a book of fairy tales she had been planning to publish was lost by her publisher, along with the illustrations she had done for it. Her second book Autumnal Dream was published in 1912. Eventually, she became tired of the subject in about 1910, when the very theme was growing popular with her Cubo-Futurist colleagues. According to Matyushin, she would now stay in the countryside from Spring until Autumn. 200px

Writings

The Hurdy-Gurdy (1909) Autumnal Dream (1912) The Poor Knight (1913) The Little Camels of the Sky (1914) The Three (1913) (posthumously); contains Guro's most famous poem Finland

English translations The Little Camels of the Sky, from The Ardis Anthology of Russian Futurism, Ardis Publishers, 1983. Thus Life Passes, from 50 Writers: An Anthology of 20th Century Russian Short Stories, Academic Studies Press, 2011. Arlekin, the Beggar, in [sic] - a Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation, University of Zadar, 2020.