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Learn about the life and work of Alexander Rodchenko, a Russian and Soviet artist, sculptor, photographer, and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and productivism, and collaborated with Mayakovsky and Vertov.
Aleksandr Rodchenko. When The Museum of Modern Art’s first director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., met Aleksandr Rodchenko on his trip to Moscow in 1927—one of the first times an Anglophone art historian had visited the Soviet Union in the years since the Russian Revolution—he wrote, “Rodchenko showed us an appalling variety of things ...
- Summary of Alexander Rodchenko
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- Biography of Alexander Rodchenko
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Alexander Rodchenko is perhaps the most important avant-garde artist to have put his art in the service of political revolution. In this regard, his career is a model of the clash between modern art and radical politics. He emerged as a fairly conventional painter, but his encounters with Russian Futurists propelled him to become an influential fou...
Rodchenko's art and thought moved extremely rapidly in the 1910s. He began as an aesthete, inspired by Art Nouveau artists such as Aubrey Beardsley. He later became a Futurist. He digested the work...Rodchenko's commitment to the values of the Revolution encouraged him to abandon painting in 1921. He embraced a more functional view of art and of the artist, and he began collaborating with the p...Photography was important to Rodchenko in the 1920s in his attempt to find new media more appropriate to his goal of serving the revolution. He first viewed it as a source of preexisting imagery, u...Childhood
Alexander Rodchenko was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a working class family. His father, Mikhail Rodchenko, was a theater props manager and his mother, Olga, a washerwoman. The family's social status did not provide much opportunity for the artistic education of talented Alexander. It is still unclear what training (if any) Rodchenko might have acquired as a child. The family moved to the city of Kazan in 1905. Two years later, Mikhail passed away, but they were able to allocate some...
Early Training
Rodchenko enrolled in the Kazan School of Art, where he studied from 1910 to 1914 under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev. The young artist quickly absorbed the basic principles of the academic training, earning high praise from his instructors. In 1914, he met Varvara Stepanova, a fellow student. They became life-long partners and artistic collaborators. Kazan proved to be too small and stifling for Rodchenko's emerging vision. He and Stepanova journeyed to Moscow in 1915 to acquire more m...
Mature Period
While organizing the provincial museums, Rodchenko trained artists to serve the Communist state at the Higher Technical Artistic Studios. He taught the same principles that shaped his own artistic discourse; he rejected illusory representation as an outdated form hindered by the capitalist visual agenda, denounced painting as a domineering visual genre, preferring design, which challenged the notion of a work of art as a unique commodity, and, even more radically, promoted the idea of an arti...
Learn about the life and work of Alexander Rodchenko, a Russian avant-garde artist who pioneered Constructivism and used art for political revolution. Explore his paintings, sculptures, photographs, and designs that reflect his experimental and radical vision.
- December 5, 1891
- December 3, 1956
- December 5, 1891
- December 3, 1956
- Realistic abstraction Alexander Rodchenko 1940.
- There and back Alexander Rodchenko 1930.
- Stairway Alexander Rodchenko 1930.
- Pioneer with a horn Alexander Rodchenko 1930.
Apr 24, 2024 · Learn about the life and work of Alexander Rodchenko, a pioneer of avant-garde art and Constructivism in 20th-century Russia. Explore his photography, painting, graphic design, and sculpture that reflected the social and political ideals of the Soviet era.
- ( Head of Content, Editor, Art Writer )
- December 3, 1956
- December 5, 1891
- St. Petersburg, Russia
Learn about the life and work of Aleksandr Rodchenko, a leader of the Constructivist movement and a versatile artist in various media. Explore his geometric paintings, sculptures, photography, design, and propaganda for the Soviet government.
Best known as a Russian Constructivist artist, in 1921 he co-wrote the Constructivists' manifesto. Among other things, it advocated the use of machine-made materials such as wire, glass, and sheet metal in the creation of socially useful art for a society in the midst of revolution.
