Iliazd’s Followers (3)

Iliazd

Born

in Tbilisi, Georgia

April 21, 1894

Died

December 25, 1975

Genre

Fiction, Poetry

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Ilia Mikhailovich Zdanevich (Georgian: ილია ზდანევიჩი, Russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Здане́вич) (April 21, 1894 – December 25, 1975), known as Iliazd (Georgian: ილიაზდ), was a Georgian and French writer and artist, and an active participant in such avant-garde movements as Russian Futurism and Dada.
He was born in Tbilisi to a Polish father, Michał Zdaniewicz, who taught French in a gymnasium and a Georgian mother, Valentina Gamkrelidze, who was a pianist and student of Tchaikovsky. (His older brother Kiril also became a well-known artist.) He studied in the Faculty of Law of Saint Petersburg State University. In 1912 he and his brother, along with their friend Mikhail Le-Dantyu, became enthusiastic about the Tbilisi painter Niko Pirosmanashvi Ilia Mikhailovich Zdanevich (Georgian: ილია ზდანევიჩი, Russian: Илья́ Миха́йлович Здане́вич) (April 21, 1894 – December 25, 1975), known as Iliazd (Georgian: ილიაზდ), was a Georgian and French writer and artist, and an active participant in such avant-garde movements as Russian Futurism and Dada.
He was born in Tbilisi to a Polish father, Michał Zdaniewicz, who taught French in a gymnasium and a Georgian mother, Valentina Gamkrelidze, who was a pianist and student of Tchaikovsky. (His older brother Kiril also became a well-known artist.) He studied in the Faculty of Law of Saint Petersburg State University. In 1912 he and his brother, along with their friend Mikhail Le-Dantyu, became enthusiastic about the Tbilisi painter Niko Pirosmanashvili; Ilya's article about him, “Khudozhnik-samorodok” (“A natural-born artist”), his first publication, appeared in the February 13, 1913, issue of Zakavkazskaia Rech'. Later in 1913 he published a monograph Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov under the pseudonym Eli Eganbyuri (Russian: Эли Эганбюри). In June 1914 the journal Vostok published his article “Niko Pirosmanashvili,” in which he mythologized the biography of the older artist, linking him with the Silver Age and the Russian avant-garde. He became involved with the new Futurist movement, participating in their discussions and writing about them and Marinetti in the Russian press, and was drawn to other avant-garde movements as well, such as Zaum and dadaism.
During World War I Zdanevich returned to the Caucasus as a newspaper correspondent, and from 1917 to 1919 he lived in Tbilisi, where he published several collections of poetry in the zaum style (Yanko Krul Albansky, Ostraf Paskhi, and Zga Yakaby). In 1918, he joined Aleksei Kruchenykh and others in the Futurist group “41°.” Zdanevich in 1919 adopted the pseudonym Iliazd. He left Tiflis for Batumi, and in October 1920 left the country to investigate the new artistic currents of France. After a year spent in Constantinople acquiring a French visa, he arrived in Paris in October 1921, where together with other artists he organized the group Cherez (“Across”), whose aim was to bring Russian émigrés together with representatives of French culture. In 1923 he began his novel Parizhachi, about four couples who agree to dine together in the Bois de Boulogne; in the course of two and a half hours (each chapter has an exact time for a title, from 11.51 to 14.09) they all manage to betray each other, and the novel itself breaks all manner of orthographic, punctuational, and compositional rules. Zdanevich continued working on this “hyperformalist” novel (which he described as an opis', or “inventory”) until 1926, but it was not published until 1994. His second novel, Voskhishchenie (“Rapture”), was published in a small edition in 1930 and was ignored at the time. Set in a mythical Georgia among mountaineers, on the surface a crime novel, it is actually a fictionalized history of the Russian avant-garde, full of allusions to world literature; it could be said to anticipate magic realism. The language of the novel is innovative and poetic, and the Slavist Milivoje Jovanović called it “undoubtedly the summit toward which the Russian avant-garde was striving.”
Zdanevich's 1923 poster for his and Tristan Tzara's Soirée du coeur à barbe [Evening of the bearded heart] is a widely known example of avant-garde typography and graphic design. During the last forty years of his life in Paris, Zdanevich was active in a variety of areas. He did analyses of church elevations, created fabrics for Chanel, and above all consecrated himself to the creation of artist's books with the collaboration of Picasso, Max Ernst, Miro, and others. His innovative typographic and design work has been exhibited at the New York Public Library, MOMA, in Montreal, in Tbilisi in 1989 in a joint exhibition with his brother Kiril, and in many other venues. Catalogs for many of these exhibitions exist and contain considerab ...more

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Average rating: 4.07 · 99 ratings · 20 reviews · 19 distinct works

	Rapture: A Novel by Iliazd, Илья Зданевич, Thomas J. Kitson (Translator) 3.74 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1930 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Поэтические книги. 1940-1971 by Iliazd, Илья Зданевич 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Письма Моргану Филипсу Прайсу by Iliazd, Илья Зданевич 4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2005 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Парижачьи by Iliazd, Илья Зданевич 3.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1923	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Футуризм и всечество. В 2 томах. Том 1 by Iliazd, Илья Зданевич really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Philosophia really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Verzückung by Iliazd, Regine Kühn (translator), Régis Gayraud (foreword) it was ok 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Философия футуриста. Романы и заумные драмы. 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poésie de mots inconnus 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Œuvres poétiques 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Iliazd (?)

“Instantly, who knows from where, angels small in stature, followed by swifts, flitted out and started tracing patterns above Brother Mocius while chiming in. Eagles, their white beards loosed to the wind, stooped, screeching. Swarms of fierce bees streaked by, obedient and humming; diverse butterflies swishes, vipers crawled from their dens, whistling, and hyenas leapt out, sobbing and weeping. Howl, peep, roar, flutter. Everything was keening. Even the humble gentian and saxifrage, customarily dumb, as is meet for plants, contributed a barely audible squeak, not to mention the slender lizards, darting in with their hatchlings”
― Iliazd, Rapture: A Novel

tags: animals, art-deco, nature, surrealism

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“As long as the murderer had not been tracked down and disarmed, no one felt safe. But not because they were dealing with a murder. Murder itself was nonsense; who hadn’t, one might ask, had occasion to murder, if not while drunk, then in combat, at any rate? Murder wasn’t the problem; it was ill will, the degree of malice.”
― Iliazd, Rapture: A Novel

tags: murder, rural-life, surrealism

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“To recover his citizen’s rights and acquire still more new, exclusive prerogatives that would render to Laurence’s authority soul and body not just the wennies, but also the entire country, he lacked just one thing—a word. … This is the marvelous word: bandit.”
― Iliazd, Rapture: A Novel

tags: bandit, notoriety, outlaw

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Iliazd’s Followers (3)

Iliazd

Combine EditionsIliazd’s books

Combine Editions
Iliazd’s books