RODCHENKO Alexander Mikhailovich

December 5, 1891 (St. Petersburg) — November 3, 1956 (Moscow)

Painter, graphic artist, industrial designer, scene-designer, photographer

Alexander Rodchenko was the son of a theatrical property maker. From 1910 to 1914 he studied at Kazan Art School under the painter Nikolai Feshin. In 1914 he moved to Moscow, where he married the artist Varvara Stepanova and entered the Stroganov School of Industrial Art. In those years Rodchenko developed an interest in the Art Nouveau style and created decorative vignettes.  Since 1915 he created graphic compositions with the help of a ruler and a compass. He also started to make collages. In 1916 Rodchenko took part in a Futurist exhibition called Magazin (“Shop”) alongside such avant-garde luminaries as Lyubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin and Alexandra Exter. In 1917 he helped Vladimir Tatlin and Georgy Yakulov to design the interior of the cafe Pittoresque on the Kuznetsky Most in the centre of Moscow. He also worked on his own projects for lighting equipment.

In 1918–1920 Rodchenko developed spatial constructions. In 1918 he started working at the Department of Fine Arts of the National commissariat of education (Narkompros); from 1918 to 1926 he taught at the ProletCult (Proletarian Culture) school in Moscow. In 1920 he became a member of the Institute of Art Culture (Inkhuk). He was also one of the founders of the industrial faculty at the Higher State Artistic and Technical Workshops (VKhUTEMAS), which later transformed into the Higher Art Technical Institute (VKhUTEIN). In those institutions he was dean of the metalwork department.

In the 1920s Rodchenko worked with the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in the field of poster and book design. In 1925 he showed his works at the 5 х 5 = 25 exhibition. The same year he also participated in the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris where he exhibited equipment for a workers’ club. That work won him four silver medals.

Since the beginning of the 1920s Rodchenko created theatrical designs. In 1920 he supplied costume designs for Aleksey Gan’s play Mi (“We”), which, however, wasn’t staged.  In 1929 he worked on the scenic design for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s play Klop (“The Bedbug”), which was staged at the theatre of Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1931 he provided designs for One-Sixth of the World, a Moscow Music Hall performance. He also contributed articles and photographs for the magazines LEF (acronym for “Levy Front”, or “The Left Front [of the Arts]”) from 1923 to 1925 and Novy LEF (“The New LEF”) from 1927 to 1928. In the late 1920s he started to dedicate himself more and more to photography.

In 1930 he joined the October group, whose members included Gustav Klutsis and El Lissitzky. In the 1930s and 1940s, due to the predominance of Social Realism, Rodchenko fell out of favour with the Soviet state, and was ruthlessly criticized. Since 1935 he and Varvara Stepanova worked on photo albums and magazines for the publishing house Izogiz (“Fine Arts”).  In the beginning of the 1940s Rodchenko produced paintings whose style was similar to that of the Abstract Expressionists.

In 1962 a Rodchenko retrospective was organized by the State Literary Museum in Moscow.

Alexander Rodchenko is considered one of the avant-garde luminaries of the 1920s. In his work he tried to realize both technical and artistic goals and reinvent the style of posters and advertising materials. His large oeuvre includes early Symbolist works (1913), ruler–and-compass drawings (1915), Abstract paintings (from the latter half of the 1910s to the beginning of the 1920s), suspended constructions (from 1918 to 1921), and photographic works (the 1920s and the 1930s). Rodchenko’s painting was highly original, even though it was partly influenced by Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism and Lyubov Popova’s Architectonic paintings. His experiments with three-dimensional spatial constructions might be considered the pinnacle of his career. In general, Rodchenko’s painting, graphic art and spatial objects were always imbued with the spirit of modern technology. Each of his artworks can be considered an artistic experiment.

Photography plays a very important role in Rodchenko’s development as an artist.  However, his first photographic works were mostly traditional. The most renowned works of that period are the striking portraits of the avant-garde leaders Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip and Lily Brik, Lev Kuleshov, Nikolai Aseyev. Later he was the first to abandon the habit of photographing straight-ahead and introduced the style of oblique angles, which made people look at ordinary things from fresh points of view. His experiments with form didn’t prevent him expressing the Zeitgeist in every photographic work that he produced, whether it was a pompous representation of a major sporting event or a lyrical image of the fleeting beauty of old Moscow squares.

Works by Alexander Rodchenko can be seen in many museums, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.