Alexander Rodchenko

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Image:1924 Alexander Rodchenko in industrial suit by Mikhail Kaufman.jpg Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko (Template:Lang-ru, November 23 (Old Style) December 5 (New Style), 1891 in St. Petersburg, Russia – December 3, 1956 in Moscow, Russia). Russian artist, sculptor, photographer. One of the founders of constructivism and Russian design. Rodchenko 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." Image:1915 Dance by Rodchenko.jpg

1 Life and career
2 Influence
3 See also
4 Works
- 4.1 Articles in Russian
5 External links

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Life and career

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg. His family moved to Kazan in 1902 and 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).

Image:1923 one-sixth part of the world poster by Rodchenko for film by Dziga Vertov.jpg 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, books, films and snooker. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the filmmaker Dziga Vertov, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.

Image:Pro eto by rodchenko.jpg 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.

Image:1929 Shostakovich Meyerhold Mayakovsky Rodchenko rehearsing Klop.jpg 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.

Image:1933 Belomorkanal Work in the rhythm of orchestra by Rodchenko.jpg Image:Bronenosets Rodchenko.jpg

Throughout the 1920s Rodchenko's work was abstract often to the point of being non-figurative. 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. Image:1920s Rodchenko and Stepanova.jpg

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Influence

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 portait 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.

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