Russian Futurism in the context of Tango with Cows

The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that flourished at the time; including Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum, Imaginism, and Neo-primitivism. In Ukraine, many of the artists who were born, grew up or were active in what is now Belarus and Ukraine (including Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Vladimir Tatlin, David Burliuk, Alexander Archipenko), are also classified in the Ukrainian avant-garde.

The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism.

Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct meaning of its own. Concrete poetry relates more to the visual than to the verbal arts although there is a considerable overlap in the kind of product to which it refers. Historically, however, concrete poetry has developed from a long tradition of shaped or patterned poems in which the words are arranged in such a way as to depict their subject.

Futurism (Italian: Futurismo [futuˈrizmo]) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Its key figures included Italian artists Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Fortunato Depero, Gino Severini, Giacomo Balla, and Luigi Russolo. Italian Futurism glorified modernity and, according to its doctrine, "aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past." Important Futurist works included Marinetti's 1909 Manifesto of Futurism, Boccioni's 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Balla's 1913–1914 painting Abstract Speed + Sound, and Russolo's The Art of Noises (1913).

Although Futurism was largely an Italian phenomenon, parallel movements emerged in Russia, where some Russian Futurists would later go on to found groups of their own; other countries either had a few Futurists or had movements inspired by Futurism. The Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, urban design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles, literature, music, architecture, and cooking.

Kseniya (or Ksenia or Xenia) Boguslavskaya (Russian: Ксения Богуславская), also known as Xana Puni, (born 5 February [O.S. 24 January] 1892 in Odessa, died 3 May [O.S. 20 April] 1972 in Herblay-sur-Seine) was a Russian avant-garde artist (Futurist, Suprematist), illustrator and scenic designer. She was the wife of the painter Ivan Puni.

Cubo-Futurism (Russian: кубофутуризм, romanized: kubofuturizm) was an art movement, developed within Russian Futurism, that arose in the early 20th-century Russian Empire, defined by its amalgamation of the artistic elements found in Italian Futurism and French Analytical Cubism. Cubo-Futurism was the main school of painting and sculpture practiced by the Russian Futurists. In 1913, the term "Cubo-Futurism" first came to describe works from members of the poetry group "Hylaeans", as they moved away from poetic Symbolism towards Futurism and zaum, the experimental "visual and sound poetry of Kruchenykh and Khlebninkov". Later in the same year the concept and style of "Cubo-Futurism" became synonymous with the works of artists within Ukrainian and Russian post-revolutionary avant-garde circles as they interrogated non-representational art through the fragmentation and displacement of traditional forms, lines, viewpoints, colours, and textures within their pieces. The impact of Cubo-Futurism was then felt within performance art societies, with Cubo-Futurist painters and poets collaborating on theatre, cinema, and ballet pieces that aimed to break theatre conventions through the use of nonsensical zaum poetry, emphasis on improvisation, and the encouragement of audience participation (an example being the 1913 Futurist satirical tragedy Vladimir Mayakovsky).

The coexistence of these differing strands of artistic practice within Cubo-Futurism reflects an ideological preoccupation with collective renewal and deconstruction (a notion born of their post-revolutionary context) with each poet or painter free to create their own aesthetic consciousness based on the concept of revolution and collective action through reinterpretation of artistic and social traditions.

David Davidovich Burliuk (Russian: Дави́д Дави́дович Бурлю́к; 21 July 1882 – 15 January 1967) was a Russian poet, artist and publicist of Ukrainian origin associated with the Futurist and Neo-Primitivist movements. Burliuk has been described as "the father of Russian Futurism."

Vasily Vasilyevich Kamensky (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Каме́нский; April 17 [O.S. April 5] 1884 – November 11, 1961) was a Russian Futurist poet, playwright, and artist as well as one of the first Russian aviators.

A Cloud in Trousers (Облако в штанах, Oblako v shtanakh) is a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky written in 1914 and first published in 1915 by Osip Brik.

Originally titled The 13th Apostle (but renamed at the advice of a censor) Mayakovsky's first major poem was written from the vantage point of a spurned lover, depicting the heated subjects of love, revolution, religion and art, taking the poet's stylistic choices to a new extreme, linking irregular lines of declamatory language with surprising rhymes. It is considered to be a turning point in his work and one of the cornerstones of the Russian Futurist poetry.