David Davidovich Burliuk (Russian: Дави́д Дави́дович Бурлю́к; 21 July 1882 – 15 January 1967) was a Russian poet, artist and publicist of Ukrainian origin associated with the Futurist and Neo-Primitivist movements. Burliuk has been described as "the father of Russian Futurism."

David Burliuk was born on 21 July 1882 in the village of Riabushky [ru] in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire. Burliuk's family was artistically inclined; two of his brothers were talented artists as well, Nikolai and Vladimir Burliuk. The Burliuk family partly descended from Ukrainian Cossacks on their father's side, who held premier positions in the Hetmanate. His mother, Ludmyla Mikhnevich, was of ethnic Belarusian descent.

From 1898 to 1904, he studied at Kazan and Odessa art schools, as well as at the Royal Academy in Munich. His exuberant, extroverted character was recognized by Anton Ažbe, his professor at the Munich Academy, who called Burliuk a "wonderful wild steppe horse".

In 1907, he made contact with the Russian art world; he met and befriended Mikhail Larionov, and they are both credited as being major forces in bringing together the contemporary art world. In 1908, an exhibition with the group Zveno ("The Link") in Kiev was organized by David Burliuk together with Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, Alexander Bogomazov, his brother Wladimir Burliuk and Aleksandra Ekster. The exhibition was a flop, especially because they were all unknown painters. The Burliuks and Larionov left for the aforementioned brothers' home in Chernianka, also known as Hylea; it was during this stay that their work became more Avant-Garde. That autumn, while visiting Ekster, they organized an exhibition which took place in the street; it was a success, and enough money was raised to go to Moscow.

In 1909, Burliuk painted a portrait of his future wife, Marussia, on a background of flowers and rocks on the Crimean coast. Many times thereafter he would set the image of his wife to canvas. Without question, two dreams possessed his heart all his life: the face of his wife and the portrait of his Ukraine and then his adopted country, the United States.^{[citation needed]}

The Futurist literary group Gileia was initiated in 1910 by David Burlyuk and his brothers at their aforementioned estate near Kherson, and were quickly joined by Vasily Kamensky and Velimir Khlebnikov, with Aleksey Kruchenykh and Vladimir Mayakovsky joining in 1911. Soon afterwards, the group would morph into literary Cubo-Futurism, the predominant form of Futurism in Russia.

From the start to the end, Cubo-Futurism always had an air of scandal about it. The artists and poets scandalized the public by walking in public spaces wearing ridiculous clothes and painting their faces, by writing plays incomprehensible to the public (the most notorious being Victory over the Sun, about a group of Futurists aiming to destroy reason), and by the fights between them and the audience at their poetry recitations. In 1913–4, Mayakovsky, Kamensky, and Burliuk decided to go on poetry tours; fury almost always followed, even on an occasion when Mayakovsky read Pushkin. Alexander Rodchenko later claimed that that specific recital "was the first time I had seen such a frenzied, furious audience". Even during the First World War their activities carried on: at the 1915 Christmas Party, hosted by Lilya and Osip Brik, the tree was hung from the roof, upside-down, and the guests arrived with vegetables in their buttonholes and in bizarre makeup. Russian Futurism would only end after the Revolution of 1917.

Most of the Cubo-Futurists also resisted the Futurists in Italy. A brief alliance with their rivals, the Ego-Futurists, did not end very well. Burliuk's colleague Velimir Khlebnikov also developed Zaum, a poetry style.