It began with a painting of a spiraled shell.
When Eva Greguski, art curator at the Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages in Stony Brook, saw a photo of the work in a Connecticut auction catalog a few years ago, she noted that it was painted on Long Island, that it didn't cost much, and that it was made by an artist named David Burliuk.
"I must have had some awareness of him, but not very much. So I did a little research," Greguski says. She called Helen Harrison, who teaches at Stony Brook University and is director of its Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton. Harrison, it turned out, knew a lot about Burliuk: She had curated a show on him more than 20 years before at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton. Burliuk immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1922 with his wife and two sons. He bought a summer home in Hampton Bays in 1941 and soon attracted a small colony of artists to the area.
Intrigued by the history, Greguski had the museum purchase the 1951 "Surreal Beach Scene" (for a small sum she says she can't reveal). Soon after, in the early 2000s, the museum bought a small landscape by Nicolai Cikovsky, one of the Russian-
émigré artists who followed Burliuk to the East End.
"I said, 'Whoa, there! That's a show,'" Greguski says as she guides a visitor through her recently opened "Bohemian Paradise: David Burliuk, Nicolai Cikovsky and the Hampton Bays Art Group." She mounted the show after doing a few years of research, contacting the artists' families and gathering more art.
The exhibit tells the story of the lively group, which used Burliuk's home as both art center and social party-central. They made sunny pictures of their idyllic surroundings - docks with boats, beaches with sunflowers, flowering gardens, rustic fish markets and fertile farms and potato fields. They often portrayed each other, sometimes capturing their friends in the act of painting.
In one nook, Greguski re-created Burliuk's studio, complete with paint-splattered easel, chairs, palettes, paint boxes and other pieces she carted from his Hampton Bays home, still owned by his family. Next to the cozy room is the home's guest book, filled with visitors' comments and sketches. The Burliuk summer home, on Squiretown Road, was within walking distance of the train station, Greguski says, because the artist didn't drive, and he still kept a home in New York City. The Burliuks and their friends spent increasingly longer stretches in the South Fork area, which they considered a refuge.
Besides Burliuk and Cikovsky, three other group members came from Russia: the twin brothers Moses and Raphael Soyer, who had arrived in the United States as children in 1912, and John Graham (born Ivan Dombrovski), who arrived in 1920. They first met in the downtown-Manhattan gallery world, as did other group members: George Constant, who came from Greece, Ashile Gorky (formerly Vosdanig Adoian) from Armenia, and Milton Avery, born in the United States.
The exhibit contains a plaster bust by sculptor Isamu Noguchi of Burliuk's wife, Marussia, who played a key role in the group's development - and her husband's art.
David Burliuk sketched or painted Marussia every day, Greguski says. Often, he sat on the front edge of the armchair in front of the exhibit's easel while she posed in the chair in front of it reading to him from a newspaper or doing needlework, Greguski says. Marussia was also the publisher of "Color & Rhyme," a chronicle of the group that lasted from 1933 to 1967. Some issues are on display.
Marussia also has her own section, with photos, text and portraits. Trained as a concert pianist, she escaped Russia by journeying with her two young sons for four years across Siberia and through Japan - mostly with her husband but sometimes preceding him. Marussia was the group's glue. "She was responsible for a lot of their work. I thought it was important to recognize her contribution. ... It was a real partnership," Greguski says. "She's ignored by many scholars." She died in 1967, six months after her husband.
An undated painting by Cikovsky, "David and Marussia on the Beach," showing David painting Marussia, "tells of the story of this exhibit," Greguski says, capturing the artists' setting, subject matter, style (realism with touches of abstraction) and charming exuberance. It's in "Searching for Utopia: 1941-1955," the middle of the exhibit's three major areas.
The exhibit's first part is "Coming to America: 1923-1941," which notes that Cikovsky and Burliuk, who was known as the Father of Russian Futurism, were established artists in Russia. Shown here for the first time in 70 years is Burliuk's huge 1930s "Petromania," an allegorical landscape that includes the Roman Colosseum and the Brooklyn Bridge. It's owned by Mary Clare Burliuk Holt, the painter's granddaughter, who can be seen as a girl in the final section, which covers 1955 to 1967.
The artists were more prosperous by then, represented in many galleries and museums, and no longer as close. Cikovsky continued to paint Long Island landscapes and seascapes until he died in 1987, 20 years after Burliuk's death, which had marked the group's demise.
"Bohemian Paradise," Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages, 1200 Rte. 25A, Stony Brook, through July 13, open Wednesdays-Sundays, $7, $6 seniors, $3 students 6-17, free under 6 and members. Related programs include Russian music program 2 p.m. this Sunday. Call 631-751-0066 or visit longislandmuseum.org.
AMISTAD LESSON
"Amistad," an interactive theatrical performance about the famous insurrection on a slave ship that anchored near Montauk in 1839, is being presented at the Ward Melville Heritage Organization Educational and Cultural Center, Stony Brook Village Center, 97P Main St., with school-day performances scheduled through March 28. Individuals may reserve places at these shows, which last 45 minutes followed by a 15-minute Q&A, or attend a special performance for the general public 7 to 8 p.m. March 14. Tickets are $10, $8
younger than 12. The program is also available via videoconferencing. Call 631-689-5888 or visit wmho.org.
SHARPTON SPEAKS
Rev. Al Sharpton will speak on "Perspectives on Leadership and Activism" as part of Adelphi University's Black History Month celebration at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The longtime political activist, president of the National Action Network, will speak at the university's Ruth S. Harley University Center Ballroom, 1 South Ave., Garden City. Free tickets are available first-come, first-served at the PantherTainment window on the center's ground floor,
8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Thursday. For information call 516-877-4555 or 516-877-3616 or visit adelphi.edu.
