Kseniya Boguslavskaya


Kseniya Boguslavskaya was a Russian avant-garde artist, poet and interior decorator. Her husband Ivan Puni was also a painter. She seems to be the originator of the Mavva featured in poems written by Velimir Khlebnikov.

Career

Born in St. Petersburg, she studied art in Paris from 1911 to 1913. She returned to St. Petersburg in 1913 and married Ivan Puni. Their apartment in St Petersburg became a meeting place for avant-garde artists and poets. With Puni she published the cubo-futurist booklet Roaring Parnassus in 1914.
During the year 1915, Boguslavskaya joined the Supremus, a group of avant-garde artists. Some group members included and Mir iskusstva.

Berlin Period

In 1919 she and Puni escaped from the Soviet Union across the ice of the Gulf of Finland. She lived in Berlin from 1919 to 1923, working as a scene designer for the Russian-German cabaret called Der Blaue Vogel and for the Russian Romantic Theatre. In Berlin, she established ties with the International Futurists, including poet :it:Ruggero Vasari|Ruggero Vasari and Kārlis Zāle.

Paris Period

After 1923 she lived with her husband in Paris. Her husband died in Paris in 1956; she donated 12 paintings by Puni to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1959 and donated some of his engravings and other papers to the National Library of France in 1966. She exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1966 and helped organize an exhibition of Puni's works at the Musée de l'Orangerie the same years.
She died in Montparnasse, Paris in 1972.