Rodchenko is the artist of the painting. Legendary Soviet photographer Alexander Rodchenko

“The great experimenter”, as defined by the collector G.D. Kostaki. Continuing his search in the field of cubo-futurist and non-objective painting, highly appreciating K.S. Malevich and V.E. Tatlin (in his youth he considered him his teacher), from 1917 to 1921 he created an original radical system of abstract art based on geometric structure and minimal means of expression , became one of the authoritative masters of the 1920s.

He was born in St. Petersburg in the theater building on Nevsky Prospekt, where his father worked as a prop maker. From an early age I dreamed of creating incredible costumes and performances from light, color, and air. After the family moved to Kazan, he studied to become a dental technician, but chose the path of an artist. At the Kazan Art School (1911–1914) he was a volunteer student and worked part-time with lessons and design work for Kazan University. Among teachers, he especially appreciated N.I. Feshin. Favorite artists: Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Aubrey Beardsley. He liked the purity of lines in the Japanese prints of Utamaro and Hokusai. He was interested in literature, wrote poetry, illustrated Wilde's plays for himself, loved the poetry of Baudelaire and the Russian Silver Age poets Bryusov and Balmont. In Kazan, he met his future wife, artist V.F. Stepanova.

A.M.Rodchenko. Non-objective composition No. 65.1918. Canvas, oil. 90×62. PGKG

A.M.Rodchenko. Composition. 1919. Oil on canvas. 160x125. EMII

A.M.Rodchenko. Lines on a green background No. 92. 1919. Oil on canvas. 73x46. KOHM

A.M.Rodchenko. Composition 66/86. Density and weight. 1918. 122.3×73. Tretyakov Gallery

A.M.Rodchenko. Non-objective composition No. 61. 1918. Oil on canvas. 40.8x36.5. TulMII

He moved to Moscow in 1916, studied at the Central Art School, and began exhibiting as a painter (exhibition “Shop.” 1916). Rodchenko joined the search for artists of the Russian avant-garde in the late 1910s, but did not repeat what had already been discovered, believing that each creator is valuable for his own original creative experience.

He welcomed the social upheavals of 1917 and actively advocated freedom of creativity. Participated in the creation of the Professional Union of Moscow Painters (1918), became secretary of the Young (Left) Federation (chairman - Tatlin) of the trade union. He campaigned for a respectful attitude towards innovation; in articles and appeals published in 1918 in the “Creativity” section of the newspaper “Anarchy”, he called on artists to be bold and uncompromising in their search. He worked in the Art Department of the NKP in the subsection of the art industry, and later, in 1919–1921, he headed the Museum Bureau of the NKP. In 1920–1924 he was a member of Inkhuk, participated in discussions of the objective analysis group on design and composition, and in the creation of a group of constructivists. He supported the democratic orientation of constructivism and industrial art. The famous project of the “Workers' Club”, presented by him at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1925, is a dream of a conveniently and rationally organized life. His motto of the 1920s: “Life, conscious and organized, able to see and design, is modern art.”

Rodchenko's work, starting with linear-circular graphic compositions of 1915, developed in the spirit of geometric abstraction. In 1916 he worked on a series of cubo-futurist compositions. In 1917–1918, he explored methods of pictorial depiction of interpenetrating planes and space, showing examples of his work at the 5th State Exhibition (1918, Moscow). In 1918 he made a series of compositions from round luminous forms “Color Concentration”. 1919 – the beginning of the use of line as a valuable form in art. He recorded his creative credo in the manifesto texts “Everything is Experience” and “Line” (1920). He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, and considered his work as a huge experiment in which any pictorial thing is limited in its means of expression.

Each of Rodchenko’s works is a compositional experiment that is minimal in the type of material used. He builds a composition on the dominant color, distributing it over the surface of the plane with transitions. He sets himself the task of making a work where texture is the main formative element - some parts of the picture are painted only with black paint, filled with varnish, others are left matte (the works “Black on Black”, 1919, based on texture processing, are shown on the 10th state exhibition “Objectless Creativity and Suprematism” (1919. Moscow). The combination of shiny and differently processed surfaces gives rise to a new expressive effect. The border of textures is perceived as the border of form. Rodchenko made compositions from only points and lines, giving these elements a philosophical ambiguity, establishing. line as a symbol of construction (19th State Exhibition. 1920. Moscow).

Finally, in 1921, Rodchenko completed his painting system with three evenly painted canvases: red, yellow and blue (triptych “Smooth Color”. Exhibition “5x5=25”. 1921. Moscow). In the prospectus for his automonography in 1922, he writes: “I consider the past stage in art important for bringing art onto the path of proactive industry, a path that the new generation will not have to go through.” This was the beginning of the transition to “industrial art”.

Rodchenko’s experience convinced him that there are universal compositional patterns (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, cross-shaped, zigzag, angle, circle, and so on). Emphasizing compositional schemes and identifying the geometric principles of composition will later form the essence of his photographic experiments with perspective.

In addition to painting and graphics, Rodchenko was engaged in spatial structures. He created three cycles of works in which he introduced the principle of structure and regular geometric construction. The first cycle - “Folding and collapsing” - is made of flat cardboard elements connected by inserts (1918). The second is “Planes Reflecting Light,” free-hanging mobiles—concentric shapes (circle, square, ellipse, triangle, and hexagon) cut out of plywood (1920–1921). The third - “According to the principle of identical forms” - spatial structures from standard wooden blocks, connected according to the combinatorial principle (1920–1921).

Rodchenko's designs, his structural and geometric linear discoveries influenced the formation of a characteristic constructivist style in book and magazine graphics, posters, object design, and architecture. If Tatlin indicated the direction of constructivism with his Monument to the Third International, then Rodchenko gave a method based on structural-geometric linear shaping and combinatorics.

In 1919–1920 he participated in the work of Zhivsculptarch (the commission of the Art Department of the NKP was created by N.A. Ladovsky, with the participation of architects V.F. Krinsky and G.M. Mapu, sculptor B.D. Korolev, painters Rodchenko and A.V. Shevchenko ), fantasized about new architectural structures and types of buildings - kiosks, public buildings, high-rise buildings. He developed the concept of a “city with an upper facade”, because he believed that in the future, in connection with the development of aeronautics, people will admire the city not from below, not from street level, but from above, flying over the city or being on various observation platforms. The land must be cleared for traffic and pedestrians, and expressive structures, passages, and hanging blocks of buildings must be designed on the roofs of buildings, which will make up this new “upper façade of the city.”

In 1920 - professor of the painting faculty, from 1922 to 1930 - professor of the metalworking faculty of Vkhutemas-Vkhutein, where he actually founded one of the first domestic design schools. He taught students to design multifunctional objects for public buildings and everyday life, achieving expressiveness of form through identifying designs and ingenious inventions of transforming structures.

Rodchenko collaborated with figures of the left-wing avant-garde cinema: A.M. Gan, Dziga Vertov (credits for Kinopravda, 1922), S.M. Eisenstein (posters for the film Battleship Potemkin, 1925), L.V. Kuleshov (work set decorator and production designer in the film “Your Friend”, 1927). Cinematography attracted Rodchenko as a new technical art.

The first photomontages and collages of 1922 were published in the Kino-phot magazine. It was published by Gan - director and architect, constructivist theorist, author of the first book about the goals of constructivism, the cover for which was made by Rodchenko. Gan attracted Rodchenko and Stepanova from the very first issue. He wrote about Rodchenko's credits for Vertov's Kinopravda (a series of chronicle films), published Rodchenko's experimental spatial designs and his architectural designs for the city of the future, and Stepanova's cartoons of Charlie Chaplin. The visual culture of the avant-garde in cinema, photography, architecture and design was unified. I. G. Ehrenburg’s book about cinema, designed by Rodchenko in 1927, was called “The Materialization of Fantasy.” These words can be considered the motto of the artist himself.

With his photographs, photomontages and graphic compositions, Rodchenko influenced directors and cameramen, created memorable film posters for Vertov’s documentaries, Eisenstein’s film epics, and advertisements for feature films directed by D.N. Bassalygo on revolutionary themes.

Rodchenko was the main artist of the literary and artistic group Lef, designed books by B.I. Arvatov, V.V. Mayakovsky, N.N. Aseev, S.M. Tretyakov, covers of “Lef” (1923–1925) and “New Lef” (1927–1928). Together with Stepanova and Gan, he became involved in the design of technical and popular science literature. In book graphics, designing advertising posters, leaflets, and packaging, he adhered to several principles: subordination of the compositional solution to the graphic scheme and structural field (module), use of chopped font, maximum filling of the page space with forms, use of graphic accents (arrows and exclamation marks). He introduced photomontage into the design of books (the first edition of the poem “About This,” 1923), magazines and posters.

Together with Mayakovsky (text), he produced more than a hundred advertising leaflets, posters, signs for state enterprises, trusts, joint-stock companies: “Dobrolyot”, “Rezinotrest”, Gosizdat, GUM, developing for each of the organizations a unique program that determined its graphic originality. The brightness, posterity, and some brutality of advertising in the first half of the 1920s are characteristic of early constructivism.

In 1925, Rodchenko traveled to Paris to the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Art Industry, where his interior design project for the “Workers’ Club” was presented in the Soviet section. The space of the club was designed comprehensively, highlighting separate functional areas (tribune and screen, library, reading room, entrance and information corner, Lenin corner, area for playing chess with a specially designed chess table), in a single color scheme (red, white, gray , black; at Rodchenko’s suggestion, K.S. Melnikov’s pavilion was also painted in the same colors).

Rodchenko has been involved in photography since 1924. His psychological portraits of loved ones (“Portrait of a Mother”, 1924), friends and acquaintances from Lef (portraits of Mayakovsky, L.Yu. and O.M. Brik, Aseev, Tretyakov), artists and architects (A A. Vesnina, Ghana, L. S. Popova). In 1926 he published his first perspective photographs of buildings (the series “House on Myasnitskaya”, 1925 and “House of Mosselprom”, 1926) in the magazine “Soviet Cinema”. In the articles “The Ways of Modern Photography”, “Against the Summarized Portrait for a Snapshot” and “Major Illiteracy or Minor Nasty”, he promoted a new, dynamic, documentary-accurate view of the world, and defended the need to master the upper and lower points of view in photography. Participated in the exhibition “Soviet Photography for 10 Years” (1928. Moscow).

He ran the “Photo in Cinema” page in the magazine “Soviet Cinema” and published articles about modern photography in the magazine “New Lef”. On the basis of the photo section of the creative association "October" in 1930 he created a photo group of the same name, which brought together the most avant-garde masters of Soviet photography: B.V. Ignatovich, E.M. Langman, V.T. Gruntal, M.A. Kaufman. In 1932 he joined the Moscow Union of Artists as a book artist. But at the same time he worked on the presidium of the Union of Photographic and Film Workers, and was a member of the jury of photo exhibitions sent to Europe, America, and Asia in the 1930s by VOKS.

In the late 1920s - early 1930s - photojournalist for the newspaper "Evening Moscow", magazines "30 days", "Give!", "Pioneer", "Ogonyok" and "Radio Listener". At the same time he worked in cinema (designer of the films “Moscow in October”, 1927, “Your Friend”, 1927, “Doll with Millions” and “Albidum”, 1928) and theater (productions “Inga” and “Bedbug”, 1929). His scenography was distinguished by laconicism and purity. Furniture and costumes in the spirit of late constructivism can be considered as rational models for production. Dynamics and transformation were present even in clothing models.

In 1931, at the exhibition of the “October” group in Moscow at the House of Press, he exhibited a number of controversial photographs - taken from the lowest point, “Pioneer Woman” and “Pioneer Trumpeter”, 1930; a series of dynamic shots “Vakhtan Sawmill”, 1931, which became the object of devastating criticism and accusations of Rodchenko’s formalism and unwillingness to restructure in accordance with the tasks of proletarian photography.

In 1932 he left Oktyabr and began working as a photojournalist in Moscow for Izogiza. In 1933 - designer of the magazine “USSR on Construction”, photo albums “10 Years of Uzbekistan”, “First Cavalry”, “Red Army”, “Soviet Aviation” and others (together with Stepanova). He was a jury member and graphic designer for many photo exhibitions, and was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the Union of Film Photographers. In 1941, together with his family, he was evacuated to the Urals (Ocher, Perm). In 1944 he worked as the chief artist of the House of Technology. In the late 1940s, together with Stepanova, he designed photo albums: “Cinema Art of Our Motherland”, “Kazakhstan”, “Moscow”, “Moscow Metro”, “300th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia”. In 1952 he was expelled from the Moscow Union of Artists and restored in 1955.

He died of a stroke and was buried at the Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Rodchenko's works are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the MLK Pushkin Museum, the State Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow House of Photography, MoMA, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and other collections.

Mayakovsky's associate in advertising
December 5 marked the 125th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko “Pioneer”, 1930

In 1916, Rodchenko moved to Moscow, met his wife and colleague Varvara Stepanova and actively began to participate in avant-garde exhibitions together with Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, and El Lissitzky. At first, his activity as a non-objective artist was limited to easel painting with compasses and rulers, largely derived from the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich.

Alexander Rodchenko

2. Alexander Rodchenko “Red. Yellow. Blue", 1921

3. Artist, photographer Alexander Rodchenko, director Vsevolod Meyerhold, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, composer Dmitry Shostakovich (from left to right)

4. Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Mayakovsky “There have never been better nipples,” 1923

5. Alexander Rodchenko “Kinoglaz”, 1924

Nevertheless, in 1921, at the exhibition “5 × 5 = 25”, he showed the triptych “Smooth Color” of three monochrome canvases (yellow, red, blue) and, thus, broke with non-objective painting, divorced from reality, in order to move on to “industrial art”, which was supposed to organically merge into the collective life of the new society.

9. Alexander Rodchenko “Workers’ Club”, 1925

The “Constructivist Group” arose in February 1921 on the initiative of the artist and art theorist Alexei Gan, as well as Rodchenko and Stepanova. A year earlier, Rodchenko began giving lectures at VKHUTEMAS (Higher State Art and Technical Workshops) and supervising student projects - among them, for example, a bus station and universal exhibition equipment.

10. Alexander Rodchenko. By the phone. 1928

11. Alexander Rodchenko. Vladimir Mayakovsky. 1924

12. Alexander Rodchenko. Pedestrians. 1928

13. Alexander Rodchenko “He is not a citizen of the USSR who is not a shareholder of Dobrolyota”, 1923

One of Rodchenko’s first works on the topic of the day, which were called upon to “rebuild” the consciousness of Soviet people, was a poster: “He is not a citizen of the USSR who is not a shareholder of Dobrolyota.” Since 1923, in tandem with Vladimir Mayakovsky, he has signed advertising posters: “Advertising designer Mayakovsky - Rodchenko.” Among their joint works is the Mosselprom emblem, advertising for the Molodaya Gvardiya magazine, GUM and Rubber Trust.

14. Alexander Rodchenko. Portrait of a mother. 1924

15. Alexander Rodchenko. "Wildflowers". 1937

16. Alexander Rodchenko. Sukharevsky Boulevard. 1928

17. Alexander Rodchenko “Composition”. 1917

18. Alexander Rodchenko “Dance”. 1915

19. Alexander Rodchenko “Pioneer”, 1930

Today, Rodchenko’s photographs are associated with laconic forms, clear lines and clear images. They are sold at auctions and exhibited in museums. However, Rodchenko took his first photographs in 1924 to collect material for photomontages.

20. Alexander Rodchenko “White Circle”. 1918

21. Alexander Rodchenko

On the 125th anniversary of his birthAlexandra Rodchenko(1891-1956) - constructivist, photographer and one of the first designers in the USSR, whose experiences have now taken shape as cultural archetypes, Gazeta.Ru recalls the main milestones of the artist’s work.

Alexander Rodchenko discovered diagonal and vertical angles for photography; his place in the visual art of the 20th century is compared to the role of Mayakovsky in poetry. But many of the artist’s contemporaries accused him of lack of talent, and some still cannot forgive Rodchenko for his pathetic filming of camp labor. Tatyana Filevskaya remembers a controversial genius.

Alexander Rodchenko's father worked as a props maker in the St. Petersburg theater. Before moving to Kazan, their apartment was located directly above the stage - to go outside, they had to walk along the theater stage. From an early age, Alexander Rodchenko was interested in art - but his father wanted a normal profession for his son and even forced him to study to become a dental technician.

However, the attempt to become a doctor failed, and Rodchenko went as a volunteer to the Kazan art school. There he met his future wife Varvara Stepanova, and also attended an evening of visiting futurists - Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and Vasily Kamensky. In his diary he wrote: “The evening ended, and the excited, but in different ways, audience slowly dispersed. Enemies and fans. There are few second ones. Clearly, I was not only a fan, but much more, I was a devotee." Soon Rodchenko moved to Moscow with the intention of joining the futurists.

Scythe and stone

In Moscow, Rodchenko met Vladimir Tatlin and other leaders of avant-garde art, and participated in the “Shop” exhibition. He chooses Tatlin with his “sculpture painting” as his authority. The ideas of constructivism, where form merges with the function of a thing, turn out to be closer to him than Kazimir Malevich’s theoretical reflections on form and color.

But Rodchenko could not remain indifferent to the last stage of Malevich’s Suprematism - in response to the “White on White” series, he created his own “Black on Black” series. To the untrained eye, these works may seem similar, but their authors had completely different tasks: Malevich completes an in-depth study of the possibilities of shapes and colors in painting, Rodchenko glides over the textures of the surface of the image.

However, Rodchenko is often mistakenly considered a student of Malevich, which he never was. And some contemporaries even called him an imitator. “He [Rodchenko] appeared in 1916, when everything had already taken place, even Suprematism,” writes literary critic and collector Nikolai Khardzhiev. “He came with everything ready and didn’t understand anything.” He hated everyone and was jealous of everyone. He was an incredible man of rubbish... Malevich made a white square on a white background, and this black square on a black background is soot, boots. When he began to study photography and photomontage, there were already wonderful masters in the West - Man Ray and others. Lissitzky was already following Man Ray, but no worse. Those were artists, but this one’s photographs - above, below - are just nonsense. I believe that there was no such artist. It was inflated here and at auctions.”

However, Rodchenko is often mistakenly considered a student of Malevich, which he never was. And some contemporaries even called him an imitator.

Alexander Rodchenko. "Girl with a watering can." 1934 Collection of the museum "Moscow House of Photography". © A. Rodchenko - V. Stepanova archive. © Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

Alexander Rodchenko. "Pioneer trumpeter" 1930 Collection of the museum "Moscow House of Photography". © A. Rodchenko - V. Stepanova archive. © Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

Designer and installer

Alexander Rodchenko. "Funeral of Vladimir Lenin." Photo collage for the magazine “Young Guard”. 1924

Alexander Rodchenko. "Books on all branches of knowledge." Poster from 1925. Lengiz

Camp and proletarian aesthetics

The end of the 1920s marked the decline of avant-garde art in the USSR. Art had to comply with the principles of socialist realism; constructivism went far beyond what was permissible.

Rodchenko was accused of formalism. He took this very hard: “How can it be, I am with all my soul for Soviet power, I work with all my might with faith and love for it, and suddenly we are wrong.” And the authorities give Rodchenko a chance to prove his loyalty, instructing him in 1933 to photograph the opening of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and issue the issue “USSR at a construction site.”

The victory of man over nature, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives (among them the Ukrainian Executed Renaissance), was recorded in several thousand images, of which about 30 are known today. With his photographs and photo collages, Rodchenko created a myth about the beneficial effects of labor on the re-education of prisoners. It was as if he had not seen the executions of tens of thousands of people: “I was shocked by the sensitivity and wisdom with which the re-education of people was carried out. They knew how to find an individual approach to everyone. We [photographers] did not yet have this sensitive attitude towards the creative worker then...”

Alexander Rodchenko. "Ladder". 1930 Collection of the museum "Moscow House of Photography". © A. Rodchenko - V. Stepanova archive. © Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

This work guaranteed Rodchenko the safety and favor of the authorities. He continues to create a new "proletarian" aesthetic with his iconic series of photographs of physical culture parades. Now artists learn from photographers - Alexander Deineka becomes Rodchenko's student.

After the war, Rodchenko photographed the theater and circus, practiced pictorialism (an attempt to bring photography closer to painting by using soft lines and creating painterly effects), and designed books and albums with his wife.

In 1951, Rodchenko was expelled from the Union of Artists, which actually meant leaving him without the opportunity to work and live. Only four years later, thanks to the efforts of his wife, Alexander Rodchenko was restored and he was even allowed to hold a personal photo exhibition. But he did not live to see its opening - in 1956, the 64-year-old artist died in Moscow.

With his photographs and photo collages, Rodchenko created a myth about the beneficial effects of labor on the re-education of prisoners.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (November 23 (December 5) 1891, St. Petersburg - December 3, 1956, Moscow) - Soviet painter, graphic artist, sculptor, photographer, theater and film artist. One of the founders of constructivism, the founder of design and advertising in the USSR.

Biography of Alexander Rodchenko

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg in 1891. Father - Mikhail Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1852-1907), theatrical props maker. Mother - Olga Evdokimovna Rodchenko (1865-1933), laundress. In 1902, the family moved to Kazan, where in 1905 he graduated from the Kazan parish elementary school.

In 1911-1914 he studied at the Kazan Art School with N.I. Feshin, where in 1914 he met Varvara Stepanova. Since 1916, Rodchenko and Stepanova began living together in Moscow. In the same year, he was drafted into the army and until the beginning of 1917 he served as the head of the department of the Moscow Zemstvo Sanitary Train.

In 1917, immediately after the February Revolution, a trade union of painters was created in Moscow. Rodchenko becomes the secretary of his Young Federation, and is mainly engaged in organizing normal living and working conditions for young artists.

Simultaneously with his work at the People's Commissariat, he developed a series of graphic, pictorial and spatial abstract geometric minimalist works.

Since 1916, he began to participate in the most important exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde (at the “Shop” exhibition, organized by Vladimir Tatlin) and in architectural competitions.

Rodchenko's creativity

He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, and considered his work as a huge experiment in which each work represents a minimal pictorial element in form and is limited in expressive means.

In 1917-1918 he worked with the plane, in 1919 he wrote “Black on Black”, works based only on texture, in 1919-1920 he introduced lines and dots as independent pictorial forms, in 1921 at the exhibition “5 × 5 = 25” (Moscow ) showed a triptych of three monochrome colors (yellow, red, blue).

In addition to painting and graphics, he was engaged in spatial structures.

The first cycle - “Folding and collapsing” (1918) - made of flat cardboard elements, the second - “Planes reflecting light” (1920-1921) - free-hanging mobiles made of concentric shapes cut out of plywood (circle, square, ellipse, triangle and hexagon ), the third - “According to the principle of identical forms” (1920-1921) - spatial structures from standard wooden blocks, connected according to the combinatorial principle. In 1921 he summed up his artistic searches and announced a transition to “production art”

The Fire's Man

He was a remarkable book artist: a masterpiece of visual poetics of the absurd in the spirit of Dadaism were his photo collages for Mayakovsky’s book About This (1923, Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow).

An artist of a wide profile, Rodchenko also constructivist reformed the style of furniture (project of a workers' club for the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, 1924), clothing (his own overalls of 1923, reminiscent of a modern denim cut), advertising and industrial graphics (posters, advertising, candy wrappers, labels for "Mosselprom", "Rezinotrest", GUM and "Mospoligraph", 1923–1925), and finally, a film poster.

He also made an outstanding contribution to avant-garde scenography (furniture and costumes for the play The Bedbug at the V. E. Meyerhold Theater, 1929; etc.). In 1926–1928 he worked in cinema as a film director. Your friend L.V. Kuleshova, 1927; Moscow in October B.V. Barnet, 1927; Albidum S.S. Obolensky, 1928; Doll with millions of S.P. Komarova, 1928.

In the 1930s, the master’s work seemed to bifurcate. On the one hand, he is engaged in propaganda firmly integrated into the program of socialist realism (design of collective books White Sea-Baltic Canal named after I.V. Stalin, 1934; Red Army, 1938; Soviet Aviation, 1939; etc.).

On the other hand, he strives to preserve inner freedom, the symbol of which for him since the mid-1930s has been images of the circus (in photo reports, as well as in easel painting, to which he returned during this period). In the 1940s, adhering to “unofficial art,” Rodchenko wrote a series of “decorative compositions” in the spirit of abstract expressionism.

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg, into the family of a theater prop maker and a laundress. At the insistence of his father, he went to become a doctor.

“When I was about 14 years old, I climbed onto the roof in the summer and wrote a diary in small books, full of sadness and melancholy from my uncertain situation, I wanted to learn to draw, but I was taught to become a dental technician...” Rodchenko recalled in his autobiographical notes.

At the age of 20, Rodchenko dropped out of medical school and first entered the Kazan Art School

In 1916, Rodchenko was drafted into the army. He will be in charge of the sanitary train. So his medical background will save him from being sent to the front.

In the early 20s, Rodchenko and Stepanov formed one of the most famous creative duets. Together they developed the so-called “new way of life for a new life” and combined many arts and artistic techniques. Rodchenko becomes a professor in the painting department of VKHUTEMAS, and at the famous exhibition “5x5=25” he demonstrates a triptych of three monochrome colors “Smooth Color”.

And in 1923, Rodchenko-Stepanov designed a new type of clothing - overalls, designed to glorify labor activity and hide gender differences between people of the future.

In 1925, the first and last “abroad” happened in Rodchenko’s life: he was sent not just anywhere, but to Paris, to design the Soviet section of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and the Art Industry. Rodchenko will stay in Paris for several months, bringing back from his trip a lot of starched collars, six pairs of stockings for his wife, a lot of equipment for work and the concept of “comrade-thing”.

In the early 30s, Rodchenko created a photo group in the legendary creative association “October”. His “calling card” was the so-called “angle shots” taken from an unusual, most often unique, point.

The post-war years turned into one endless nightmare for Rodchenko. There are only black entries in the diary.

From the life of the first Russian designer and master of photography

the site is starting a large project “50 most important photographers of our time”. We will talk about photographers who had a great influence on the development of photographic art. About the authors who, with their works, shaped the concept of “modern photography”. About the great masters of their craft, whose names and works are simply necessary to know.

It’s strange, but most commercial photographers do not think about the roots of their profession, focusing their work only on colleagues or a couple of casually familiar names. But in this sense, our profession differs little from the profession of, say, an artist. Ask a master painter if he knows any famous artists - most likely, in response you will hear a short lecture about painting, in which the interlocutor will talk about his favorite artistic styles, schools, and most likely accompany the story with a lot of dates, names and links to works . Yes, most artists have special education (at least at the art school level), where they learn about all this. But to a greater extent, this is, of course, self-education. Artists need to know the global context, because it is impossible to create works in isolation from the work of great masters, without knowing the basics. So why do photographers think differently?

The first professional on our list is the great Russian artist and photographer Alexander Rodchenko.

Even if you try to describe the activities of Alexander Rodchenko exclusively in #tags, you will end up with several pages of text. The most important participant in the Russian avant-garde, artist, sculptor, graphic artist, photographer... And much more.

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg, studied at the Kazan Art School named after. Feshin, where he met his future wife, the talented artist Varvara Stepanova. Subsequently, he held a number of important positions, including the post of chairman of the Institute of Artistic Culture (in this post he replaced another great artist - Wassily Kandinsky)

“Work for life, not for palaces, temples, cemeteries and museums”

This was his motto, which fully reflected the sentiments of the avant-garde artists of that time. Rejecting “decoration” and going against the aesthetic criteria of art, they endowed their works - from paintings to architectural forms - with many details, each of which had an important, constructive function. Hence the name of one of the main directions of their work - constructivism. “The art of the future,” Rodchenko said, “will not be a cozy decoration for family apartments. It will be equal in necessity to 48-story skyscrapers, grandiose bridges, wireless telegraphy, aeronautics, submarines, etc.”

Rodchenko began his work at a time of great change: outside the window was what would later be called the Leninist Soviet project. Hopes for a bright communist future were inspiring.

Rodchenko and photomontage

Among other things, Rodchenko is famous for his experiments in the field of photomontage - he was actually a pioneer of this art in Russia. A sort of master of Photoshop, but in Soviet times. You need to understand that Rodchenko, as a true communist and supporter of Soviet power, tried to direct his abilities to strengthening new orders of life, so he was happy to engage in propaganda activities. Thus, the most interesting and memorable propaganda posters of that time were designed using the photomontage technique. Masterfully combining text boxes, black and white photographs and color images, Rodchenko was engaged in what would now be called poster design - by the way, he is often called the founder of design and advertising in Russia. It was Rodchenko who Mayakovsky entrusted with the design of his book “About This”.

Rodchenko and photography

Rodchenko, like all Russian avant-garde artists, experimented with forms and technology. So he took up photography, and reportage photography at that. Using unexpected angles (the term "Rodchenko's angle" is often found in art history literature), forcing the viewer to spin prints before his eyes (or his head in front of the prints) and creating images that seem to be about to move, he has established himself as one of the most progressive and pioneering photographers of the time. Although then there were, frankly speaking, fewer of them (photographers) than there are now. Rodchenko plays with the visual means of photography, honing them to the limit. Rhythmic patterns, compositionally ideal interweaving of lines - he manages all this masterfully. He was one of the first to use multiple shooting of an object in action - storyboarding. Rodchenko was not afraid to violate the recently established photographic canons - he made portraits from the bottom up or deliberately “filled up the horizon.” With his photographic “eye,” he seemed to be trying to cover the entire Soviet Union. Perhaps that is why he took many photographs (especially reportage shots from demonstrations) while standing on stairs, roofs, or being in other non-obvious points.

Rodchenko continued his experiments even after the “death” of the avant-garde project - but under socialist realism and Stalin this was no longer encouraged. In 1951 he was even expelled from the Union of Artists and was rehabilitated only in 1954 - 2 years before his death.

Today, the most important educational institution in the field of visual arts, the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, bears the name of Alexander Rodchenko.