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Home > Featured Exhibitions > Aleksandr Rodchenko Biography
Born in St. Petersburg into the family of a theater prop worker, Aleksandr Rodchenko became one of the Russian Constructivist movement's leaders and practitioners, capable of synthesizing avant-garde visual theories with the ideology of the Revolution. Although he first studied art at the Kazan School from 1910 to 1914, and there met his future wife, the artist Varvara Stepanova, the seminal moment in his artistic evolution really occurred in 1914 when he attended a Russian Futurist meeting in Kazan and became aware of avant-garde activities. The next great influence upon him came in 1916 when he exhibited alongside Tatlin and Malevich at the exhibition Magazin (The Store) in Moscow. His sudden determination to reduce his means to geometric elements and to create an art less personal than free-hand drawing is evidence of their effect upon him. The result was an integration of the Suprematism of Malevich and the Constructivism of Tatlin in his early visual experiments.
During those first post-Revolutionary years, he was closely involved with the reorganization of artistic life in Moscow through various Leftist groups and worked under Olga Rozanova. His relentless investigative mode of work made him a major exponent of Constructivism. He and Vasilii Kandinsky were the central founding members of the INKhUK (Institute of Artistic Culture) in Moscow with Stepanova and others, making a center for Constructivist theory and practice. He became the institute's director in 1921, forcing Kandinsky to leave, leading with the belief that a reformation of the artist*s role in society would allow art to be a catalyst for positive social change, capable of educating the masses in the modes and methods of progress. For this reason, he abandoned easel painting for utilitarian work as a designer in 1921, departing from the medium with the dramatic display of The Last Painting, monochrome panels of red, blue and yellow at the exhibition 5 x 5 = 25 in Moscow. In 1922, he became the director of the metalwork faculty at the VKhUTEMAS where he continued teaching until 1930. That same year his work was represented at The First Russian Art Exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin.
Rodchenko's attention to so many forms of design - from architectural design to the design of furniture, stage, clothing, exhibitions, posters, film captions and books - reflects the fundamental nature of Constructivist theory which effectively transcended these distinctions into broad creative principles.
Along with El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko was the most outstanding of the Constructivists who carried out a radical reconstruction of the appearance of printed books. Both emphasized modern technology and how it could improve life for people, believing that art should serve a cause and not merely reflect the personality of the artist. Thus, photomechanical processes were embraced and letterpress discarded as a process of the past. He began experimenting with photo-collage in 1919. By 1924, he was one of the pioneers in photomontage in Russia, developing its use as illustration in posters and in the layout and covers of books and periodicals. Rodchenko's cover designs for the journals Lef and Novyi Lef , both edited by the poet and painter Vladimir Mayakovsky, are key examples of his Constructivist designs. He and Mayakovsky collaborated often, designing window posters and advertisements for the state store Mosselprom and GUM, as well as periodicals.
After his involvement with the LEF group, he joined the October group in 1928 but was expelled from it in 1931 for his formalist photography. Rodchenko's non-objective and experimental practices were no longer aligned with politics. Stalin rise to power after 1924 led to the disbanding all arts organizations as part of his consolidation of authority by 1932, the close of his first Five Year Plan. This cultural suppression led to the demise of the avant-garde and the assent of the government endorsed Socialist Realism after this period of heightened criticism of modernism. Rodchenko was assigned to official state work and served as a press photographer for the journals 30 Days and Abroad , and as the designer for several issues of USSR in Construction.
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