Aleksandr Shevchenko

That same year, he was admitted to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where he studied with Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin.

In 1910, he joined the Oslini khvost circle (em russo: Ослиный хвост or "Donkey's Tail", nucleated by Mikhail Larionov, producing a series of Rayonist works between 1913 and 1914 and writing two essays entitled "Neo-Primitivism: Its Theory and Its Capacities" (1913) and "Principles of Cubism and Other Trends of Modern Art," in which he delineated his view of modern painting as a combination of influences from Cézanne, Cubism, Futurism, and the popular forms of traditional Russian art.

After 1911, he took part in exhibitions held by the Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth) in Saint Petersburg and participated in the first Moscow Salon.

[1] In these works, he defends the spontaneity of Russian folk art and the lubok (a popular print style), and claims that it has "oriental" roots.

During the 1930s, he travelled to Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kazakhstan, creating Orientalist works and gathering evidence for his theory on the origins of Russian art.