Elena
Genrikhovna Guro

On the paternal side was descended from the family of the Marquis de Mericour who escaped from the French revolution of 1789, moved to Russia. Elena's father was an officer.

In 1890 he enrolled in the Drawing school of the Imperial society for the encouragement of arts. In 1903-1905 worked in the Studio of the painter J. Tsionglinskogo.

Elena Guro died of leukemia in the estate of Uusikirkko in Finland.

The daughter of a senior military: the father of Guro was Secretary of the St. Petersburg headquarters and troops of guard when V. kN. Vladimir Alexandrovich, Lieutenant-General; maternal grandfather, a teacher and children's writer, M. B., Chistyakov; Elena's sister, Catherine Niesen, participated in the publications of the futurists. Received art education, studied painting in the workshop of J. F. Tsionglinskogo, where she met her future husband, musician and avant-garde artist M. V. by Matutinum. In 1906-1907 he took lessons in painting from L. S. Bakst and M. Dobuzhinsky.

In 1909 he published the first book of stories, poems, and plays "hurdy-gurdy"; the circulation during the life of the Guro remained unsold, and the remaining copies are received in re-sale after her death. The book sympathetically treated Vyacheslav Ivanov, Lev Shestov, Aleksey Remizov and Alexander Blok, with whom Guro was personally familiar (Guro illustrated his poems in the anthology "Surf") and who showed to her work and personality of permanent interest. In 1908-1910, Guro and Matyushin included in the current round of Russian Cubists-futurists-"bodylen" (David Burliuk, Vasily Kamensky, Velimir Khlebnikov), they meet in the house Matyushina on Sand street in St. Petersburg (now the Museum of the Petersburg avant-garde on the street of Professor Popova, Petrograd side), there is the publishing house "Crane", in 1910 he published the first collection of Cubists-futurists "Zadok the judges", which involved and Guro. In 1910-1913 she actively performs both as an artist at the exhibitions left the "Union of youth", etc.

In 1912 Elena Guro released their second compilation "Autumn dream" (positive review viach. Ivanova), which includes the play, a number of fragments and illustrations of the author. Her most famous book, consisting of mostly poems, but including diary fragments — "Heavenly babies showed themselves" (1914) — published posthumously. Creativity Guro evoked a sympathetic response a variety of critics, including negative mood to futurism (for example, Vladislav Khodasevich contrasted it to the rest of the futurists).

For creativity Guro characteristic syncretism of painting, poetry and prose, impressionistic perception of life, the laconic lyrical poetics of the fragment (the effect Remizov, "symphonies" of Andrei Bely, "poems in prose" of Baudelaire and the related tradition), free verse, experiments with zaum ("Finland"). Favorite subjects: motherhood (in some poems are reflected the longing for a dead son "William Rotenberg", which actually was not), spreading throughout the world, pantheistic sense of nature, the curse of the city, in some poems of social motives.

Elena Guro died at his Finnish cottage from leukemia, and was buried; and her grave has not been preserved. Her memory futurists dedicated the collection "Three" among the young poets of the Petrograd in 1910 maintained the cult of the Guro, there was dedicated to her publishing "House on Sand" (continued "Crane").

Interest in Guro awakened thanks to the work of Vladimir Markov, "Russian futurism" (1968); in 1988 in Stockholm published her book "Selected prose and poetry", in 1995 there — unreleased works from the archives, and in 1996 in Berkeley, CA — "Works". In Russia, published two collections of favorites with the same name "Heavenly babies showed themselves" in Rostov-on-don in 1993 in St. Petersburg publishing house "Limbus the Press" in 2002, also in the collections "From the notebooks" (1997) and "once there Lived a poor knight" (1999). Creativity Guro is a subject of many researches in Russia and abroad.