Alexander Vvedensky

Who was Alexander Vvedensky?

Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky was a Russian poet with formidable influence on "unofficial" and avant-garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union. Vvedensky is widely considered as one of the most original and important authors to write in Russian in the early Soviet period. He is placed on par with writers such as Andrei Platonov for innovation in the language. Vvedensky considered his own poetry "a critique of reason more powerful than Kant's."

He is also a legendary figure of Leningrad culture, especially due to a legend that he had sex with a woman in the glass dome of the famous Singer Building overlooking Nevsky Prospect in the middle of the city.

Vvedensky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and took an interest in poetry at an early age. An admirer of Velemir Khlebnikov, Vvedensky sought apprenticeships with writers connected to Russian Futurism. In the early 1920s he studied with well-known avant-garde artists from Futurist circles such as Matiushin and Tufanov and Terentiev, at the newly formed GInHuK state arts school.