Jack of Diamonds (artists)

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Jack of Diamonds (Russian: «Бубновый валет»), also called Knave Of Diamonds, was a group of artists founded in 1909 in Moscow. The group included Robert Falk, Aristarkh Lentulov, Ilya Mashkov, Alexander V. Kuprin, and Pyotr Konchalovsky. The Knave of Diamonds was a scandalous exhibition that opened in Moscow in December 1910. Subsequently the title was adopted by a newly formed artistic society in Moscow. Soon thereafter, this group became the largest and one of the most significant exhibition societies of the early Russian avant-garde. Their works demonstrate the artists’ interest in the developing of the new styles (Russian Primitivism, Russian Cezanneism, Moscow School of Neo-Primitivism, oth.)that emerged around their first exhibition as a result of their integrating folk art of the provinces in the artworks. Other new styles and genres, such as performance and body-art, emerged from this unlikely blending of fine European art, Russian folk art, and urban folk of the masses in Russia. The artistic significance of the individual members of The Knave of Diamonds aside, their activities conditioned a qualitative shift in Russian of the 1910s, among most important changes - democratization of the art society in Russia.

The name itself was coined by Mikhail Larionov for the exhibition of 1910. Among the famous painters that participated in the first Jack of Diamonds exhibition were Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Gontcharova, Kazimir Malevich (and later, Léopold Survage). Later Mikhail Larionov and his followers disagreed with the group's ethos and formed the more radical Donkey's Tail.