Aleksei Kruchyonykh

Aleksei Kruchyonykh
Born	Aleksei Yeliseyevich Kruchonykh (1886-02-09)9 February 1886 Olevka, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	17 June 1968(1968-06-17) (aged 82) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian
Known for	Poetry, Collage, Artist's book
Notable work	Universal War, 1916
Movement	Russian Futurism, Zaum

Aleksei Yeliseyevich Kruchyonykh^[1] (Russian: Алексе́й Елисе́евич Кручёных; 9 February 1886 – 17 June 1968) was a Russian poet, artist, and theorist, perhaps one of the most radical poets of Russian Futurism, a movement that included Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and others. Born in 1886, he lived in the time of the Russian Silver Age of literature, and together with Velimir Khlebnikov, another Russian Futurist, Kruchenykh is considered the inventor of zaum, a poetry style utilising nonsense words. Kruchonykh wrote the libretto for the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, with sets provided by Kazimir Malevich. In 1912, he wrote the poem Dyr bul shchyl; four years later, in 1916, he created his most famous book, Universal War.

He is also known for his Declaration of the Word as Such (1913): "The worn-out, violated word "lily" is devoid of all expression. Therefore I call the lily éuy – and original purity is restored."^[2]