Jack of Diamonds also called Knave Of Diamonds, was a group of artists founded in 1909 in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. The group included Robert Falk

Robert Falk

Robert Rafailovich Falk was a Russian painter.-Biography:Falk was born in Moscow in 1886. In 1903 to 1904 he studied art in the studios of Konstantin Yuon and Ilya Mashkov, in 1905 to 1909 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture with Konstantin Korovin and Valentin...

, Aristarkh Lentulov

Aristarkh Lentulov

Aristarkh Lentulov was a major Russian avant-garde artist of Cubist orientation who also worked on set designs for the theatre.- Biography :...

, Ilya Mashkov

Ilya Mashkov

Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov was a Russian artist, one of the most significant and at the same time most characteristic painters of the circle of "Jack of Diamonds" .He was born in the cossack village Mikhailovskaya-on-Don in a peasant family...

, Alexander V. Kuprin

Alexander V. Kuprin

Alexander Vasilievich Kuprin was a Russian painter, a member of the Jack of Diamonds group. Kuprin was born in Borisoglebsk in 1880 and died in Moscow in 1960. His most famous works are various landscape and still life....

, Alexander Osmerkin

Alexander Osmerkin

Alexander Alexandrovich Osmerkin was a Russian painter, graphic artist, stage designer, and art teacher. He was a member of the Knave of Diamonds avant-garde group, AKhRR, and Society of Moscow Artists groups...

, Wladimir Burliuk

Wladimir Burliuk

Wladimir Burliuk was an avant-garde artist , book illustrator.-Biography:Burliuk was born on March 27, 1886 in Kharkiv, the brother of David Burliuk.In 1903 he studied at Azbe School in Munich....

, and Pyotr Konchalovsky

Pyotr Konchalovsky

Pyotr Konchalovsky , was a Russian painter, a member of Jack of Diamonds group.-Life and career:...

. The Knave of Diamonds was a scandalous exhibition that opened in Moscow in December 1910. Subsequently the title was adopted by a newly formed artistic society in Moscow. Soon thereafter, this group became the largest and one of the most significant exhibition societies of the early Russian avant-garde. Their works demonstrate the artists’ interest in the developing of the new styles (Russian Primitivism, Russian Cezanneism, Moscow School of Neo-Primitivism, oth.) that emerged around their first exhibition as a result of their integrating folk art of the provinces in the artworks. Other new styles and genres, such as performance and body-art, emerged from this unlikely blending of fine European art, Russian folk art, and urban folk of the masses in Russia. The artistic significance of the individual members of The Knave of Diamonds aside, their activities conditioned a qualitative shift in Russian of the 1910s, among most important changes - democratization of the art society in Russia.

The name itself was coined by Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was an avant-garde Russian painter.-Life and work:...

 for the exhibition of 1910. Among the famous painters that participated in the first Jack of Diamonds exhibition were Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Larionov

Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was an avant-garde Russian painter.-Life and work:...

, Natalia Gontcharova, Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...

 (and later, Léopold Survage

Léopold Survage

Léopold Survage was an important French painter of Russian-Danish-Finnish descent born in Vilmanstrand, Finland .-Biography:At a young age, Survage was...

). Later Mikhail Larionov and his followers disagreed with the group's ethos and formed the more radical Donkey's Tail

Donkey's Tail

Donkey's Tail was a Russian artistic group created from the most radical members of the Jack of Diamonds group. The group included such painters as: Mikhail Larionov , Natalia Gontcharova, Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Shevchenko. The group was influenced by the Cubo-Futurism...

.