Elena Guro

Painter, graphic artist, illustrator, writer, poetess, playwright. Pseudonym of Eleonora von Notenberg. Sister of Ekaterina Niesen. Studied at the School of Drawing of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1890–93), Jan Ciagli?skj’s private studio (1903–05) and under Léon Bakst and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at the Elizaveta Zvantseva School of Painting and Drawing (1906–08). Illustrated George Sand’s Contes d’une grand-mère (1904). Married Mikhail Matiushin (1904) and cofounded such avant-garde groups as Wreath (1908), Union of Youth (1909) and Hylæa (1910). Contributed to Futurist miscellanies (1910–13). Died of leukaemia at her dacha in Uusikirkko in Finland (now Polyany in Russia) and honoured by a posthumous one-woman show at the last Union of Youth exhibition (1913–14). Wrote and published such works of Futurist literature as Early Spring (1905), The Barrel Organ (1909), The Autumn Dream (1912) and The Celestial Baby Camels (1914).