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Description: signed Burliuk. (lower right) oil on burlap

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Dimensions: measurements 30 1/4 by 24 1/2 in. alternate measurements 78.4 by 62.2 cm

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Provenance: ACA Gallery, New York
Joseph H. Hirshhorn, New York, 1959
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (acquired as a gift from the above in 1966)

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Published: David and Mary Burliuk, Color and Rhyme, Hampton Bays, New York, 1962-63, no. 51 and 52, illustrated

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Notes: SOLD BY THE ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN TO BENEFIT ITS ACQUISITIONS PROGRAM
Burliuk executed multiple variations of the present composition, including Der Rider with a Book (1913) [sic] and The Death Rider. The title and subject refer to Der Blaue Reiter, an Expressionist school led by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc that was active in Munich from 1911 to 1914. Both David Burliuk and his brother Vladimir were counted among its members, who sought to express spirituality through colors and abstracted forms; they were particularly drawn to the color blue, which was considered a spiritual color, as well as imagery of medieval knights and warrior saints, linked to spiritual heroism in both Germanic and Russian religious culture. In the school's eponymous almanac, published in 1912, Kandinsky wrote, "None of us seeks to reproduce nature directly...We are seeking to give artistic form to inner nature, i.e. spiritual experience."