Alexander Rodchenko

For more information on Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko, visit Britannica.com.

(b St Petersburg, 23 Nov 1891; d Moscow, 3 Dec 1956). Russian painter, sculptor, designer and photographer. He was a central exponent of Russian Constructivism, owing much to the pre-Revolutionary work of Malevich and Tatlin, and he was closely involved in the cultural debates and experiments that followed the Revolution of 1917. In 1921 he denounced, on ideological grounds, easel painting and fine art, and he became an exponent of Productivism (see CONSTRUCTIVISM,

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1891-1956) was a Russian abstract painter, sculptor, photographer, and industrial designer who, as an early pioneer in Russian Constructivism, believed that art must serve as an agent for social change.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad) on November 23, 1891. Rodchenko was of humble origin. His father, Mikhail, was a theater craftsman while his mother, Olga Yevdokimovna, was a laundress. Little is known concerning Rodchenko's early childhood. It is believed that he left school in 1905 before finishing his formal education.

In 1910 Rodchenko enrolled at the Kazan School of Art in the city of Odessa. His earliest works from this period are figurative and exhibit a marked influence from European trends, particularly the flat decorative quality found in the art of Aubrey Beardsley. Rodchenko's earliest subject matter was derived from the world of the theater, where his father worked, and the circus. Within a short time Rodchenko began to move toward abstract painting. By the time he left the Kazan School of Art in 1914 he had already begun to experiment with abstract design.

Rodchenko's first purely abstract works date from 1915 after he moved to Moscow and registered at the Stroganov School. He began with abstract designs drawn with a compass and ruler. He also worked in collage by arranging pieces of paper on canvas.

The following year was an important one for Rodchenko. In 1916 he met Vladimir Tatlin, who was later to play an important role in Russian Constructivism. Through Tatlin Rodchenko was introduced to many of the leading figures of the Russian avant-garde, including Kasimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. He also met Varvara Stepanova, whom he later married. In March of 1916 Rodchenko exhibited some of his pictures at Tatlin's Futurist exhibition entitled "The Store." Independent though struggling, Rodchenko began to embrace leftist political ideas.

Throughout the revolutionary period in Russia (1917-1921) Rodchenko experimented with both Cubistic and Futuristic tendencies. He was also greatly influenced by the work of his friend Tatlin and the Suprematist Malevich. From Tatlin Rodchenko acquired an interest in surface textures, while from Malevich he learned to work with flat geometric shapes. However, Rodchenko's own attitude toward abstraction digressed from that of many of his fellow artists. His interest in physics, math, and geometry led to a rather scientific approach whereby abstraction became both a scientific and a creative means of revealing reality. Therefore Rodchenko tended to avoid the spiritual aspects of Kandinsky as well as the metaphysical concerns inherent in the work of Malevich. He considered their art evidence of an avoidance of reality. For Rodchenko, art had to serve the function of social change and reform. He felt that his scientific approach was best suited to deal with the problems that reality presented.

After the revolution, Rodchenko played an active and spirited role in the reformation of Russian society and culture. In 1918 he worked for IZO, the Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of Education. Between 1918 and 1926 Rodchenko taught at the Proletkult School in Moscow and at the vkhutemas (technical workshops) throughout the 1920s. Rodchenko also held memberships in various institutes - for example, INKHUK (the Institute of Artistic Culture).

Between 1918 and 1921 Rodchenko's earlier interest in the arrangement of flat geometric shapes on a two-dimensional surface developed into "spatial constructions" where he broke free from the confines of the canvas to create three-dimensional sculpture. These constructions were made from various materials, including wood, tin, and cardboard. As in his drawings and paintings, Rodchenko abstracted flat, planar, geometric shapes from nature and assembled them in a process akin to the factory worker, often creating a series based on a single theme. Always an experimenter, Rodchenko's constructions grew more elaborate and sophisticated. His Hanging Construction (1920) was one of the first constructed sculptures in Russia to include moving parts. In this work Rodchenko arranged a series of intersecting and concentric circles of wood that hang freely to be moved by the natural circulation of air. Rodchenko became one of the earliest pioneers of the Constructivist movement in Russia.

The 1920s were the busiest and most productive years for Rodchenko. Apart from his busy teaching duties, Rodchenko embarked on a wide range of artistic pursuits. He designed costumes and stage sets for the theater as well as designs in typography. In 1925 he designed the worker's club for the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris exhibition of decorative arts.

However, Rodchenko seemed to devote most of his energy in the 1920s to photography, a field in which he was most original. Known for his unique use of perspective and photomontage techniques, his photographs appeared on the covers of such Soviet magazines as Lef and Novyi Lef in the late 1920s. He also designed several photomontages for various editions of the Mayakovsky's poetry. Rodchenko's skills as a designer and photographer eventually led him to design numerous propaganda posters for the Soviet government. Such practical applications of Rodchenko's talents during the 1920s were indicative of the changes that Russia was experiencing. The revolutionary government began to discourage artists from working in the "impractical" mode of abstraction. Instead, artists were asked to serve the state and its ailing economy through more practical means. Rather than leave his homeland, as did so many other Russian artists during this period, Rodchenko chose to remain. His firm belief that art was created in the service of social reform was perfectly suited to a rapidly changing Russia.

By the 1930s Rodchenko's abstract painting and photography was increasingly losing favor as Russian taste grew even more conservative. Rodchenko's popularity began to wane. For the first time Rodchenko returned to the figurative painting and subjects of his youth.

During World War II Rodchenko was evacuated to Ochera, where he wrote articles and served as a photographer for several local newspapers while his paintings grew increasingly abstract and emotionally charged. The last years of his life were spent working on various literary projects with his wife. Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko died in Moscow on December 3, 1956.

Further Reading

Several excellent books on Rodchenko are available in English, including David Elliott, Rodchenko and the Arts of Revolutionary Russia (1979) and German Karginov, Rodchenko (1979). Background material may be found in Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1922 (1962).

Additional Sources

Karginov, German, Rodchenko, London: Thames and Hudson, 1979.

Rodchenko: the complete work, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987, 1986.

A leading avant-garde designer of the Russian Revolutionary period, Rodchenko was widely known for his Constructivist work across a variety of creative fields including posters, packaging, photography, textiles, furniture, products, and stage sets. After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Kazan from 1911 to 1914, Rodchenko moved to Moscow, where he studied graphic design at the Stroganoff School of Applied Art. In 1915 he met fellow Russian Vladimir Tatlin, who had been involved with the Parisian avant-garde, reinforcing his growing interest in Cubism and Futurism, trends that were far removed from the conservatism curriculum of the Strogonoff School. Amongst Rodchenko's first product designs were a series of metal lamps designed for the Café Pittoresk in Moscow in 1917, working alongside Tatlin and others who were also involved in other aspects of the Café's interior design. Much of Rodchenko's design work was devoted to promoting the revolutionary cause, including a kiosk in 1919 for the sale and distribution of newspapers and other political propaganda. He also designed a large number of posters promoting state enterprises between 1923 and 1925 in collaboration with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Throughout the 1920s he was a prolific graphic designer, working on political, commercial, and film posters, as chief designer and contributor to the journal LEF (1923-5) and its successor Novy LEF (1927-8)—both edited by Mayakovsky—as well as packaging and book covers. His use of photomontage, striking typographic layouts, and flat, coloured geometric elements resulted in many memorable designs. He also designed simple, functional geometric wooden furniture and shelving for the Workers' Club in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels. The philosophy that underpinned this display was in many ways a counterpart to the functional workers' clothing he had designed in 1920. Rodchenko was a member of Inhuk (the Institute of Artistic Culture) which had been established in 1920 by the painter Wassily Kandinsky. In the following year, with his wife Varvara Stepanova and others, he reorganized Inhuk to promote Productivism—the mass production of industrial and applied art (see Constructivism)—and wrote the Productivist Manifesto. He was also involved in design education, playing a significant role at the Vkhutemas (Higher State Artistic and Technical Workshops) in Moscow from 1920 to 1930. He also worked on costume and set design, including those for The Bed Bug by Mayakovsky (1929). During the 1930s he increasingly devoted his attention to photography and book and periodical design, often in conjunction with his wife. Their collaborations included ‘The White Sea Canal’ issue of the periodical USSR in Constructivism (1933), the book Film in the USSR (1936), and the photo-album First Cavalry (1937).

Rodchenko, Alexander (1891-1956), Russian artist and photographer. Born in St Petersburg, Rodchenko pursued a career in painting and design, where his activities varied from teaching art theory in Moscow to winning competitions for the design of newspaper kiosks. His contributions to the Soviet pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, including the catalogue cover and designs for workers' clothing, attracted international interest. His first work with the camera, in the early 1920s, followed his increasing Constructivist focus on applied and socially responsible art. From 1923 to 1928 he produced photo-articles for the magazine Novy Lef, and included close-ups and low-angle shots in a varied repertoire of camera viewpoints. He also created photomontages and wrote in praise of snapshot photography's ability to record a rapidly changing world. His style (particularly his camera angles) attracted hostility towards the end of the decade, and detractors denounced ‘bourgeois’ and foreign influences. Nevertheless, in the 1930s he was employed on documentary projects (including one on the notorious White Sea Canal) for USSR in Construction, a large-format publication promoting Russian achievements. Criticism persisted, however, and Rodchenko's later years were spent in obscurity. In a post-war diary entry, he recognized that he had, in effect, become invisible.

— Robert Pols

Bibliography

• Lavrentiev, A., Rodchenko: Photography, 1924-1954 (1996)

This article is about the Russian artist. For the fictional Star Trek character, see Alexander Rozhenko.

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko
Born	December 5, 1891(1891-12-05) St. Petersburg
Died	December 3, 1956 (aged 64) Moscow
Nationality	Russian
Field	painting, photography
Movement	Constructivism

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (Russian: Александр Михайлович Родченко, 5 December [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956) was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova.

Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

Contents 1 Life and career 2 Influence 3 The end of painting 4 Gallery of selected works 5 See also 6 External links 7 References

Life and career

Alexander Rodchenko Dance. An Objectless Composition, 1915

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg to a working class family. His family moved to Kazan in 1909, after the death of his father^[1] at which point he studied at the Kazan School of Art under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev, and at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow. He made his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, in 1915. The following year, he participated in "The Store" exhibition organized by Vladimir Tatlin, who was another formative influence in his development as an artist.

Rodchenko was appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik Government in 1920. He was responsible for the reorganization of art schools and museums. He taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios (VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN).

In 1921 he became a member of the Productivist group, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the filmmaker Dziga Vertov, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.

Impressed by the photomontage of the German Dadaists, Rodchenko began his own experiments in the medium, first employing found images in 1923, and from 1924 on shooting his own photographs as well. His first published photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky's poem, "About This," in 1923.

From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko collaborated closely with Mayakovsky (of whom he took several striking portraits) on the design and layout of LEF and Novy LEF, the publications of Constructivist artists. Many of his photographs appeared in or were used as covers for these journals. His images eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space.

Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was very abstract. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements.

Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism." He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years. He died in Moscow in 1956.

1920s. Rodchenko and Stepanova

Influence

Much of the work of 20th century graphic designers is a direct result of Rodchenko's earlier work in the field. His influence has been pervasive enough that it would be nearly impossible to single out all of the designers whose work he's influenced.

His 1924 portrait of Lilya Brik has inspired a number of subsequent works, including the cover art for a number of music albums. Among them are influential Dutch punk band The Ex, which published a series of 7" vinyl albums, each with a variation on the Lilya Brik portrait theme, and the cover of the Franz Ferdinand album, You Could Have It So Much Better. The poster for One-Sixth Part of the World was the basis for the cover of "Take Me Out", also by Franz Ferdinand.

The end of painting

In 1921, Russian avant-garde artist Alexander Rodchenko executed what were arguably some of the first true monochromes (artworks of one color), and proclaimed "I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue, and yellow. ^[2] I affirmed: this is the end of painting." These paintings were first displayed in the 5x5=25 exhibition in Moscow. For artists of the Russian Revolution, Rodchenko's radical action was full of utopian possibility. It marked the end of easel painting – perhaps even the end of art – along with the end of bourgeois norms and practices. It cleared the way for the beginning of a new Russian life, a new mode of production, a new culture.

Gallery of selected works

1926. Film poster for the The Battleship Potemkin by Alexander Rodchenko

See also

• Russian avant-garde
• Anti-art

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alexander Rodchenko

• The Rodchenko and Stepanova collection at The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts
• Photos of Rodchenko on danyanovikov.narod.ru
• Rodchenko's art and fate: the experiment continues review of 1998-99 exhibition touring the US, Germany and Sweden reviewed on the World Socialist Web Site
• BMI Voyager - Rodchenko's works come to London
• Peter Schjeldahl on Alexander Rodchenko
• Henry Art exhibition information

References

1. ^ John E. Bowlt, "Aleksandr Rodchenko Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings", Museum of Modern Art New York, 2005, Page 31.
2. ^ "Drawing a blank: Russian constructivist makes late Tate debut", The Independent, 2009-1-27

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