Artist Alexander Rodchenko: famous avant-garde paintings and their names

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The paintings of A. M. Rodchenko are not accidentally recognized by a number of authoritative critics as masterpieces of world art. During his long life, the famous Soviet painter managed to create several copyright illustration techniques, came up with unique methods for working with photography, became the founder of advertising in the USSR and the first Soviet designer.

The genius of the artist allowed Rodchenko to realize himself in painting, drawing, poster painting, sculpture, photography, decoration, advertising and design.

Rodchenko's paintings are highly valued among contemporary art lovers and are often purchased by collectors for private storage. Most of the artist's works are exhibited in contemporary art galleries in Russia and CIS countries.

Biography

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born on November 23, 1891 in St. Petersburg, in the family of a theatrical props and laundress. The childhood of the future genius of art passed in an atmosphere of hunger, poverty and constant hard work. ATIn 1902, Alexander's father, Mikhail Mikhailovich, transports his family to Kazan, where he finds a better-paid job. In the same city, Sasha receives his first education, graduating with honors from the Kazan parish elementary school.

Early years

Having completed the first stage of education, Rodchenko entered the Kazan Art School, where the famous master N. I. Feshin became the mentor of the young painter. A competent teacher immediately noticed the young man's artistic talent and recommended Sasha to continue his studies in a more professional institution. Rodchenko's paintings of that period were heavily influenced by Futurism and Cubism. Sasha depicted human silhouettes made up of various geometric shapes, actively experimented with color and shape, trying to achieve a lack of proportion and express the artistic concept not through the prism of realism, but to convey it figuratively.

Revolutionary artistic activity

In 1914, Alexander Rodchenko met Varvara Stepanova, who also studied fine arts with N. I. Feshin. Two years later, young people graduate and move to Moscow, living in a civil marriage. According to Stepanova's memoirs, throughout their life together, she and Rodchenko were united by an incredible desire to create something new in art, to consider those of its parallels and unique manifestations that no one had paid attention to before.

The next year, 1916, Rodchenko spends in the army, having received a position in the supply sector.

Backfrom the service, the young man immediately decides to become a member of the new union of artists-painters, created by revolutionary-minded creators.

Despite the near-political talk in the circles of masters of the brush, the union did not promote any political ideology. Soon the association was named "Young Federation", and Alexander Rodchenko was elected its artistic and political leader. From now on, one of the main goals of the union is the struggle for normal conditions for the existence and work of young creators. The older generation, to which contemporaries are already beginning to attribute Rodchenko himself, is actively engaged in the implementation of various orders from the field of art.

Recognition in the artistic environment

The modern composition of Alexander Rodchenko's paintings attracts the attention of representatives of the new government, the artist is appointed chief designer of several important objects. Having completed the painting of buildings, Rodchenko was appointed head of the Fine Arts Department of the People's Commissariat for Education and Head of the Museum Bureau.

During this period, Alexander is actively involved in the development of conceptual compositions, which are a series of paintings and illustrations made in the technique of early cubism. The artist begins to explore the genre of minimalism, trying to convey his condition with just a few black strokes on waxed paper. Later, these works will become classics of domestic minimalism and will give a big impetus to the development of Soviet and Russian graphics.

From the mid-1910s, paintings by artist Rodchenkoreceive the highest awards at exhibitions dedicated to the new Russian art. Representatives of the avant-garde, minimalism, cubism, futurism and expressionism are gradually uniting into a community of free art.

Alexander Mikhailovich has always considered art as a way to search for new forms and ways of expressing feelings. Also, the artist was in a constant process of experimentation, paying attention to drafting and radical minimalism.

• 1917-1918. At this time, the paintings of the avant-garde artist Rodchenko became role models and sources of inspiration for many aspiring authors. Quite simple in form and filled with deep meaning, the artist's works in the style of "flat painting" receive high marks from contemporaries.
• 1919. Rodchenko paints his famous painting Black on Black. All the works of the master of this period belong to the technique of "textural painting", Alexander Mikhailovich defines the texture as "the basis of the entire artistic direction of the era", actively experimenting with various types and types of matter, iron, glass. Rodchenko's painting instantly becomes the standard of "textural painting".
• 1919-1920. The main elements of Alexander Mikhailovich's painting of this period are lines and punctuation marks. The artist considered these symbols to be incredibly important elements of his individual creative culture.
• 1921. Constructivism in the paintings of Alexander Rodchenko reaches its peak. At the Moscow exhibition, the master demonstrated a triptych fromthree colors without adding any other shades. Only three colors were used in the work: yellow, blue and red).

Conceptualism in the works of Rodchenko

The artist's conceptual ideas were most characteristically manifested in his work on constructions from three-dimensional elements. The master worked hard on products made of plaster, cardboard, iron, glass and vinyl, creating spatial structures filled with artistic originality and philosophical meaning.

• 1918 - “Folding and Dismantling” - cardboard figures connected using the groove fastening method were used in the work.
• 1921 - "Planes reflecting light" - a composition made of different geometric shapes of the same size, painted with silver paint and suspended from a special frame.
• 1921 - "Based on the principle of the same forms" - a series of works from identical wooden blocks folded into various shapes. In each figure, a different construction of the bars was used.

Photographer activities

Rodchenko's photographic work is an example of the first Soviet photograph created using post-processing technology and photo collage. Alexander Mikhailovich worked in the genre of psychological portrait photography. He paid great attention to the lighting of a person's face and the emotional component of his gaze.

Also, Rodchenko was the first to guess to use the technique of photomontage when designing books. A striking example is his work done for VladimirMayakovsky, who later became a great friend of the artist.

Since 1925, the master began to exhibit his work in various art galleries, presenting a series of photographs at once:

• 1925 - "The House on Myasnitskaya" - a series of works dedicated to the unique building on Myasnitskaya Street, which Rodchenko photographed in various lighting throughout the year.
• 1926 - "The House of Mosselprom" - a work similar in execution, however, took much more time from the artist.

Working with government

The Soviet government highly valued the paintings of Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, and in 1933 the artist became a member of a detachment of creative people secretly sent to build the White Sea Canal. The aim of the group was to "cover the construction in a positive way". Rodchenko's task also included the arrangement of photo labs in the branches of the Gulag.

The artist brilliantly did his job, taking about two thousand photographs, and it was his pictures that were used in the design of a book about the construction of the White Sea Canal, which was written by a team of writers led by Maxim Gorky.

Design and advertising

Rodchenko's paintings were actively used as covers of various literary and theater magazines. The artist himself has repeatedly acted as the author of the design of a particular publication, for example, Alexander Mikhailovich worked on an ongoing basis with the magazine "USSR in Construction", often illustrating articles with his photographs.

The artist also took part in the creation of a largethe number of advertising posters for the Soviet circus. In 1938-1940, he created a large number of advertising collages and other photographs on this topic.

Author's style

The individual artistic style of the master manifested itself, first of all, in the constant striving for the new, the unknown. It is no coincidence that Alexander Rodchenko's paintings with titles like "Abstraction" or "Non-objective Composition" reflect, first of all, the author's being in the process of searching. Rodchenko himself did not fully realize what he was looking for in art, and it was thanks to this condition that brilliant works came out from under his brush.