Alexander Mikhalovich Rodchenko, a constructivist and designer, spent his entire adult life in creative pursuits. He did not always find understanding with the state, and then stagnation set in in work, and longing in his soul. This is especially marked last years life.
Childhood and youth
In the family of a theatrical props and laundress in 1891, the son Alexander was born. Eleven years later they moved to Kazan. There Rodchenko graduated from the primary parish school in 1905. Parents dreamed that their son would learn and become a dental technician - the specialty of a wealthy person, and the teenager wants to draw. From the age of 20 until the outbreak of the First World War, he spent four years in Kazan, in art school, where he will meet Varya Stepanova, who will later become a friend and ally for life.
But in 1914 he was taken into the army and sent to the Moscow Zemstvo, where he was in charge of the hospital train.
Moscow
Since 1916, Alexander Rodchenko begins to experiment with painting and participate in V. Tatlin's exhibitions, where he exhibits his avant-garde paintings. You can treat the avant-garde in different ways. In these works one will find deep meaning in invented new forms, because the artist was thinking about something when creating paintings. Alexander Rodchenko considered his creative searches as a research method.
After all, he wrote programs in which he fixed his beliefs. And in pictures composed of geometric shapes, tried to reveal the depth of space and the shape of the elements.
Organizational activity in Moscow
In 1917, the artists create a trade union. Alexander Rodchenko is a fully formed person, he is 26 years old, he is full of energy and, being the secretary of the trade union, takes on the organization of the life of young artists. In addition, he participates in the design of the Pittoresk cafe, and also serves in the People's Commissariat for Education.
Creation
In 1923, Mayakovsky's book "About It" was published. Rodchenko created brilliant illustrations for it. Photo collages included portraits of the creator himself and his beloved Lily Brik. The book was ambiguously perceived by contemporaries. The setting enhanced the frankness of the drama. For example, Lunacharsky was delighted with the poem, but he was skeptical about its design, Rodchenko's work was too innovative. This book was a continuation of their joint design work on posters. In the 1920s, the language of the poster changed dramatically - it became extremely catchy, concise, and informative. It differed sharply from Western European in its innovative forms. Mayakovsky and Rodchenko in tandem created political
For this short period several appeals were created to contact Mosselprom, among which the most striking are "Cheap bread" and "Nowhere but ...", as well as Rezinotrest sausages, GUM advertising. In addition to catchy texts, they are distinguished by visual methods of influence: simple contrasting bright colors, strange angles. And also used inclined, vertical and horizontal lines, different size font. All taken together could not fail to attract attention and convince.
A new kind of art
The next facet of the talent of this extraordinary person was accidentally revealed - photography. Alexander Rodchenko was faced with the need to photograph his theatrical work. What is amazing, ideas just gush in the 20s. The question arises: when did he manage to implement them all? Did you work 24 hours a day? Discovering for yourself the new kind art, he devoted himself to it with all his ardor. He caught moments of life everywhere and created masterpieces.
He photographed people and objects from unusual points, took angles, photographed from above and below, created portraits. These were pavilion shootings, and on the streets of the city, and in nature.
In the 1930s, Rodchenko was accused of being bourgeois for filming a pioneer blowing a trumpet. But he continued to work, not adjusting to the requirements of the authorities. The case ended with the fact that in 51 he was expelled from the Union of Artists. It was a dark period in his life and in the life of his wife Varvara Stepanova. But everything settled down after Stalin's death, and in 1954 Rodchenko was reinstated in the ranks of artists. Two years later, in 1956, Rodchenko passed away. He was 64 years old.
But he has done so much that his archives should continue to be explored and photographic exhibitions of his work should be made, because they reflect the time and have not lost their artistic expression.
Rodchenko Alexander Mikhailovich
(23.11) 5.12.1891, St. Petersburg - 3.12.1956, Moscow
Painter, graphic artist, photographer, designer, teacher, member of the INHUK Constructivist group (Institute artistic culture), a member of the October group, a member of the Union of Artists in the graphics section
In 1911-1914 he studied at the Kazan Art School, in 1916 he moved to Moscow. Exhibited as a painter since 1916, one of the organizers of the professional union of painters in 1917. From 1918 to 1922 he worked in the Department of Fine Arts of the Narkompros (department visual arts People's Commissariat of Education) as the head of the museum bureau and as a member of the art board.
At the same time, he developed a series of graphic, pictorial and spatial abstract-geometric minimalist works. Since 1916, he participated in the most important exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde, in architectural competitions and in the work of the Zhivskulptarh commission (commission for pictorial, sculptural and architectural synthesis). In the texts-manifestos "Everything is an experiment" and "Line" he fixed his creative credo. He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, 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 1917-18 he worked with a plane, in 1919 he painted "Black on Black", works based only on texture, in 1919-1920 he introduced lines and points as independent pictorial forms, in 1921 at the exhibition "5x5 = 25" (Moscow) he showed triptych of three monochrome colors (yellow, red, blue).
Simultaneously with painting and graphics, he was engaged in spatial constructions. The first cycle - "Folding and Dismantling" (1918) - from flat cardboard elements, the second - "Planes reflecting light" (1920-1921) - freely hanging mobiles from concentric shapes cut out of plywood (circle, square, ellipse, triangle and hexagon ), the third - "According to the principle of identical forms" (1920-21) - spatial structures from standard wooden bars, connected according to the combinatorial principle. In 1921, he summed up his pictorial searches and announced the transition to "production art".
In 1920 he became a professor at the Faculty of Painting, in 1922 - 1930 - a professor at the metalworking faculty of the VKHUTEMAS-VKHUTEIN (Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops - Higher Artistic and Technical Institute). Taught students how to design multifunctional items for Everyday life and public buildings, achieving expressiveness of form not at the expense of decorations, but by revealing the design of objects, ingenious inventions of transforming structures. In 1920-1924 he was a member of INHUK.
From 1923 he worked as a universal profile designer. He was engaged in printing, photomontage and advertising graphics (together with V. Mayakovsky), was a member of the LEF (Left Front) group, and later was a member of the editorial board of the Novy LEF magazine.
In 1925, he was sent to Paris to design the Soviet section of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and the Art Industry, and carried out his own project for the interior of the Workers' Club.
From 1924 he was engaged in photography. Known for his highly documentary psychological portraits of loved ones (“Portrait of a Mother”, 1924), friends and acquaintances from the LEF (portraits of Mayakovsky, L. and O. Brik, Aseev, Tretyakov), artists and architects (Vesnin, Gan, Popova). In 1926, he published his first foreshortened photographs of buildings (series "House on Myasnitskaya", 1925 and "House of Mosselprom", 1926) in the magazine "Soviet Cinema". In the articles "Ways contemporary photography”, “Against the summed portrait for a snapshot” and “Major illiteracy or petty muck” promoted a new, dynamic, documentary-accurate view of the world, 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).
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was a photojournalist for the Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper, the magazines 30 Days, Give, Pioneer, Ogonyok, and Radio Listener. At the same time he worked in the cinema (artist of the films "Moscow in October", 1927, "Journalist", 1927-28, "Doll with Millions" and "Albidum", 1928) and theater (productions of "Inga" and "Klop", 1929), designing original furniture, costumes and scenery.
One of the organizers and leaders of the October photo group. In 1931, at the exhibition of the Oktyabr group in Moscow at the Press House, he exhibited a number of discussion photographs - taken from the lowest point of Pioneer and Pioneer Trumpeter, 1930; a series of dynamic shots "Vakhtan Sawmill", 1931 - served as a target for devastating criticism and accusations of formalism and unwillingness to reorganize in accordance with the tasks of "proletarian photography".
In 1932 he left the "October" and became a photojournalist for Moscow publishing house Izogiz. From 1933 he worked as a graphic designer for the magazine “USSR at a Construction Site”, photo albums “10 Years of Uzbekistan”, “First Cavalry”, “Red Army”, “Soviet Aviation” and others (together with his wife V. Stepanova). 30s and 40s He was a member of the jury and designer of many photo exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the professional union of film and photo workers, was a member of the MOSH (Moscow organization of the Union of Artists of the USSR) since 1932. In 1936 he participated in the "Exhibition of Masters of the Soviet Since 1928, he regularly sent his work to photographic salons in the USA, France, Spain, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia and other countries.
Literature:
Chan-Magomedov S.O. Rodchenko. The complete work. London, 1986
A.M. Rodchenko and V.F. Stepanova. (From the series Masters of the Art of the Book). M., 1989
Alexandr M. Rodchenko, Varvara F. Stepanova: The Future Is Our Only Goal. Munich, 1991
A.N. Lavrentiev. Angles of Rodchenko. M., 1992
Alexander Lavrentiev. Alexander Rodchenko. photography. 1924-1954. Koln, 1995
Alexander Rodchenko. Experiences for the future. M., 1996
Alexander Rodchenko. (Published in conjunction with the exhibition Alexandr Rodchenko at the Museum of Modern Art). New York, 1998
Alexander Rodchenko was born in 1891 in the family of a theatrical props. His father did not want his son to follow in his footsteps, and tried with all his might to give the boy a “real” profession. AT autobiographical notes Rodchenko recalled: “In Kazan, when I was 14 years old, I climbed onto the roof in the summer and wrote a diary in small books, full of sadness and longing from my uncertain position, I wanted to learn to draw, but they taught me to be a dental technician ...” The future avant-garde photographer managed to even two years to work in the technical prosthetic laboratory of the Kazan Dental School of Dr. O.N. Natanson, but at the age of 20 he left medicine and entered the Kazan Art School, and then the Moscow Stroganov School, which opened the way for him to independent creative life. Rodchenko did not immediately turn to photography. In the mid-1910s, he was actively engaged in painting, and his abstract compositions took part in many exhibitions. A little later, he showed his talent in a new field, taking part in the design of the Pittoresk cafe in Moscow, and for some time even abandoned painting, turning to "production art" - a trend that, in its extreme form, denied art and turned purely to the creation of utilitarian objects. In addition, in the late tenths and early twenties, the young artist participated in many public life: he became one of the organizers of the trade union of painters, served in the department of fine arts of the People's Commissariat of Education, and headed the Museum Bureau. Rodchenko's first steps in the field of photography date back to the early 1920s, when he, at that time theater artist and the designer, faced with the need to capture their work on film. Having discovered a new art for himself, Rodchenko was completely fascinated by it - however, in photography, as in painting, at that time he was more interested in “pure composition”, exploring how objects located on a plane influence each other. It is worth noting that Rodchenko was more fortunate as a photographer than as an artist - the former was recognized more quickly. Pretty soon, the young photographer established a reputation as an innovator by making a series of collages and montages using his own photographs and magazine clippings. Rodchenko's works were published in the Soviet Photo and Novy LEF magazines, and Mayakovsky invited him to illustrate his books. Photomontages by Rodchenko, used in the design of the publication of Mayakovsky's poem "About this" (1923), literally became the beginning of a new genre. Since 1924, Rodchenko increasingly turned to the classic areas of photography - portraiture and reportage - but here, too, the restless innovator did not allow established traditions to dictate terms to himself. The photographer created his own canons, which ensured his work a place of honor in any modern photography textbook. An example is a series of portraits of Mayakovsky, performing which Rodchenko discarded all the traditions of pavilion photography, or “Portrait of a Mother” (1924), which has become a classic of photography close-up. The photographer also made a great contribution to the development of the genre of photo reportage - it was Alexander Rodchenko who was the first to use multiple shooting of a person in action, which allows you to get a collective documentary-figurative idea of the model. Rodchenko's photo reports were published in a number of central publications: the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, the magazines 30 Days, Give, Pioneer, Ogonyok, and Radio Listener. However, the real calling card» Rodchenko's perspective photographs became famous - the artist went down in history with photographs taken at an unusual angle, from an unusual and often unique point, from a perspective that distorts and "revives" ordinary objects. For example, the photographs taken by Rodchenko from the rooftops (upper angle) are so dynamic that it seems as if the figures of people are about to begin to move, and the camera will float over the city, revealing a breathtaking panorama - it is not surprising that the first foreshortened shots of buildings (the series Myasnitskaya", 1925 and "House of Mosselprom", 1926) were published in the magazine "Soviet Cinema". Around the same time, Rodchenko made his debut as a photography theorist: since 1927, in the journal Novy LEF, of which he was a member of the editorial board, the artist began to publish not only pictures, but also articles (“To the photo in this issue”, “ Ways of Modern Photography”, etc.) However, for the beginning of the 30s, some of his experiments seemed too bold: in 1932, the opinion was expressed that Rodchenko’s famous Pioneer Trumpeter, taken from the bottom point, looked like a “fat bourgeois”, and he himself the artist does not want to reorganize himself in accordance with the tasks of proletarian photography. Filming the construction of the White Sea Canal in 1933 really forced Rodchenko to rethink the relationship between art and reality, which seemed less and less inspiring to the artist. It was at this time that in Rodchenko's photographs the unprecedented construction sites of socialism and the new Soviet reality began to give way to the special world of sports and the magical reality of the circus. Rodchenko devoted a whole series of unique series to the latter - the pictures were to be included in a special issue of the USSR at a Construction Site magazine. Unfortunately, the issue was signed for printing five days before the start of the Great Patriotic War and never saw the light. In the postwar years, Rodchenko worked extensively as a designer and returned to painting, although he still often turned to his favorite genre of photo reportage. His "non-standard" work still evoked official circles certain doubts - the disagreements between the artist and the authorities ended in 1951 with the expulsion of Rodchenko from the Union of Artists. However, just three years later, in 1954, the artist was again reinstated in this organization. On December 3, 1956, Alexander Rodchenko died in Moscow from a stroke and was buried on Donskoy cemetery.
The Soviet master of photography Alexander Rodchenko is known as one of the founders of constructivism and the creation of a completely new direction - design. For many years he worked with his wife, the artist Varvara Stepanova, doing photography, painting, drawing, book design, sculpture and advertising design at the same time.
In photography, Rodchenko put documentary and realism in the first place. generated images. He is the pioneer in the field of experiments with foreshortened composition of the frame and photographic points.
Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born in 1891, his father worked as a theater props. At first, he studied as a dental technician, but his passion for painting eventually overpowered him, and Rodchenko entered the Kazan Art School. It was there that he met his future wife Varvara Stepanova, with whom he subsequently made many joint art projects.
Rodchenko was actively interested in painting and worked on the creation abstract compositions. For some time he devoted himself to the so-called industrial art, which involved the creation of utilitarian objects without any artistic content.
After the 1917 revolution, Rodchenko became one of the secretaries of the trade union of painters in Moscow, organizing the necessary conditions for young artists. During this period, he tries his hand at decorating the Pittoresk cafe in Moscow and at the same time manages the Museum Bureau. His life in art is a constant experiment associated with the creation of completely new graphic, pictorial and spatial projects.
In painting, Rodchenko introduced lines and dots as independent pictorial forms, in the field of creating spatial forms - folding and disassembling structures from flat cardboard elements. In the early 1920s, he worked teaching activities teaching its students the basics of creating multifunctional items for everyday life and public buildings.
Creative experiments gradually led Rodchenko to photography, which he considered an absolutely necessary means of expression for any contemporary artist. His portrait and reportage shots, as well as interesting collages using both his own photographs and clippings from magazines, immediately attracted attention to him.
Photographs of Rodchenko began to be published in such publications as Vechernyaya Moskva, Sovetskoe Foto, Give, Pioneer, and Ogonyok. With a reputation as an innovator in photography, Alexander Rodchenko soon received an offer from Vladimir Mayakovsky to illustrate his books. Rodchenko made several photo montages for the design of the 1923 edition of Mayakovsky's poem "About It", which even served as the beginning of a new trend in modern art - book illustration and design.
Two years later, at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, Rodchenko's advertising posters were awarded a silver medal. At the same time, he turns to the classical portrait photography in photography - portraits of Mayakovsky, Aseev, Tretyakov, Melnikov and other representatives of art. In the magazine "Soviet Cinema" in 1926, his first foreshortened photographs of buildings were also published, including a series of photographs "House on Myasnitskaya" and "House of Mosselprom".
What distinguished Alexander Rodchenko from other photographers of the 1920s? The fact is that photography of that time was characterized by the creation of images with a horizontal composition and a rectilinear foreshortening. The photographs were dominated mainly by static sculptural compositions which did not evoke great emotions in the viewer.
Rodchenko was the first in Soviet photography to call for abandoning such dogmas in favor of images that describe life as realistically as possible. That is why he constantly experimented with angles and shooting points in order to catch this or that object in those moments that would make up its essence, movement.
In photography, Rodchenko sought to reveal the content of an object or a whole phenomenon. To do this, he skillfully "played" with the angles of photography, used contrasting chiaroscuro and worked on the original compositional construction frame.
Alexander Rodchenko entered the history of Russian and world photography as the author of unique photographs taken under the most different angles, in an unusual and unusual for human eye perspective. He believed that every photographer should “remove the veil from the eyes, called “from the navel” ... and shoot “from all points except the navel until all points are recognized.”
In the 1930s, Alexander Rodchenko worked as a photojournalist for the Izogiz publishing house and as a graphic designer for the magazine "USSR in Construction", which allowed him to take part in a trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal, where he took a series of reportage photographs. After a series of government propaganda projects inspired by the zeitgeist and revolutionary romanticism, Rodchenko became interested in sports photography and photography. unusual world circus.
In the post-war years, he returned from photography to painting and decoration. However, his original work soon came into conflict with the position of the official authorities, and in 1951 Rodchenko was expelled from the Union of Artists.
Alexander Rodchenko died in December 1956 in Moscow and was buried at the Donskoy Cemetery. In photography, he is often compared to Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. In many ways, the school of Soviet photography created with his participation opened up many new outstanding names - Arkady Shaikhet, Max Alpert, and others.
In 1998, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted large-scale exhibition works of Alexander Rodchenko, incorporating all of his best projects in painting, graphics and photography.
"Great experimenter", as defined by the collector G.D. Kostaki. Continuing the search in the field of cubo-futuristic 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 abstract art, based on a geometric structure and minimal means of expression, became one of the authoritative masters of the 1920s.
Born in St. Petersburg in the building of the theater on Nevsky Prospekt, where his father worked as a props. FROM early years dreamed of creating incredible costumes and performances from light, color, air. After the family moved to Kazan, he studied as a dental technician, but chose the path of an artist. At the Kazan Art School (1911-1914) he was a volunteer, 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 cleanliness of the lines in Japanese engraving Utamaro and Hokusai. He was interested in literature, wrote poetry, illustrated Wilde's plays for himself, loved the poetry of Baudelaire and Russian poets Silver Age 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. 160×125. EMII
A.M. Rodchenko. Lines on a green background #92. 1919. Oil on canvas. 73×46. KOCM
A.M. Rodchenko. Composition 66/86. Density and weight. 1918. 122.3×73. GTG
A.M. Rodchenko. Non-objective composition No. 61. 1918. Oil on canvas. 40.8×36.5. TulMII
Moved to Moscow in 1916, studied at the StsKhPU, began to exhibit as a painter (the exhibition "Shop", 1916). Rodchenko joined the search for Russian avant-garde artists in the late 1910s, but did not repeat what had already been discovered, believing that each creator is valuable in 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 Painters of Moscow (1918), became the secretary of the Young (left) federation (chairman - Tatlin) of the trade union. He agitated for a respectful attitude to innovation, in articles and appeals published in 1918 in the "Creativity" section of the newspaper "Anarchy", called on artists to be bold and uncompromising in their search. He worked in the Fine Arts Department of the NKP in the sub-department of the art industry, and later, in 1919-1921, he was in charge of the Museum Bureau of the NKP. In 1920–1924 he was a member of Inkhuk, participated in the discussions of the objective analysis group on construction and composition, and in the creation of the constructivist group. He supported the democratic orientation of constructivism and industrial art. famous project 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 construct, is contemporary art."
Rodchenko's art, beginning with the linear-circular graphic compositions of 1915, developed in the spirit of geometric abstraction. In 1916 he worked on a series of cubo-futuristic compositions. In 1917-1918 he explored the methods of pictorial representation of interpenetrating planes and space, showing examples of his work at the 5th State Exhibition (1918, Moscow). In 1918 he made a cycle of compositions from round luminous forms "Color Concentration". 1919 - the beginning of the use of the line as an intrinsically valuable form in art. He fixed his creative credo in the manifesto texts “Everything is an experiment” and “Line” (1920). He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, considered his work as a huge experiment in which any pictorial thing is limited in expressive means.
Each work by Rodchenko is a minimum compositional experience in terms of the type of material used. He builds a composition on the dominant color, distributing it over the surface of the plane with transitions. Sets himself the task of making a work where texture is the main form-building element - some sections of the picture, written only black paint, filling with varnish, others - leaving matte (works "Black on Black", 1919, based on textured processing, are shown at the 10th state exhibition "Pointless Creativity and Suprematism" (1919. Moscow). A combination of shiny and differently processed surfaces gives rise to a new expressive effect.The border of textures is perceived as the border of the form.Rodchenko made compositions from the same points, lines, giving these elements philosophical ambiguity, approving the line as a symbol of construction (19th state exhibition. 1920. Moscow).
Finally, in 1921, Rodchenko completed his painting system with three evenly colored canvases: red, yellow and blue (triptych "Smooth Color". Exhibition "5 × 5 = 25". 1921. Moscow). In the prospectus for his automonography in 1922, he writes: “I consider the passed stage in art to be important for bringing art to the path of an initiative industry, a path that the new generation will not have to go through.” This was the beginning of the transition to "production art".
Rodchenko's experience convinced that there are universal compositional schemes (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, cruciform construction, zigzag, angle, circle, and so on). Emphasizing compositional schemes, revealing the geometric principles of composition construction will later be the essence of his photographic experiments with foreshortening.
In addition to painting and graphics, Rodchenko was engaged in spatial constructions. He created three cycles of works, in which he introduced the principle of structure and regularity. geometric construction. The first cycle - "Folding and Dismantling" - from flat cardboard elements, connected by insets (1918). The second - "Planes reflecting light", - freely hanging mobiles - carved from plywood concentric shapes (circle, square, ellipse, triangle and hexagon) (1920-1921). The third one is “According to the principle of identical forms” – spatial structures from standard wooden bars, connected according to the combinatorial principle (1920–1921).
Rodchenko's constructions, his structural-geometric linear discoveries influenced the formation of a characteristic constructivist style in book and magazine graphics, posters, object design, and architecture. If Tatlin pointed out 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 Zhivskulptarkh (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 would admire the city not from below, not from street level, but from above, flying over the city or being on all kinds of observation decks. The land must be freed for traffic and pedestrians, and on the roofs of buildings design expressive structures, passages, hanging blocks of buildings, which will make up this new “upper facade of the city”.
In 1920 he was a professor at the faculty of painting, from 1922 to 1930 he was a professor at the metalworking faculty of Vkhutemas-Vkhutein, where he actually founded one of the first national schools of design. He taught students to design multifunctional objects for public buildings and everyday life, achieving expressiveness of form by revealing the design, witty inventions of transforming structures.
Rodchenko collaborated with figures of the left 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). Cinema attracted Rodchenko as a new technical art.
The first photomontages and collages of 1922 were published in the Kino-fot magazine. It was published by Gan, a director and architect, constructivist theorist, author of the first book on 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 to Vertov’s Kinopravda (a series of chronicle films), published experimental spatial constructions of Rodchenko and his architectural projects cities of the future, Stepanova's cartoons of Charlie Chaplin. The visual culture of the avant-garde in cinema, photography, architecture and design was unified. Rodchenko's 1927 book on cinema by I. G. Ehrenburg was called 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 documentaries Vertov, Eisenstein's film epics, advertising for feature films directed by D.N. Bassalygo on revolutionary themes.
Rodchenko was the main artist of the Lef literary and artistic group, designed the books of B.I. Arvatov, V.V. Mayakovsky, N.N. (1927–1928). Together with Stepanova and Gan, he joined in the design of technical and popular science literature. AT book graphics, designing advertising posters, flyers, packaging adhered to several principles: subordination compositional solution a graphic scheme and a structural field (module), the use of a chopped drawn font, the maximum filling of the sheet space with forms, the 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 made more than a hundred flyers, posters, signboards for state enterprises, trusts, joint-stock companies: "Dobrolyot", "Rezinotrest", Gosizdat, GUM, having developed a unique program for each of the organizations that determined its graphic originality. Brightness, posterity, some brutality of advertising in the first half of the 1920s is characteristic of early constructivism.
In 1925 Rodchenko went to Paris for International exhibition decorative arts and the art industry, where his project for the interior of the "Workers' Club" is presented in the Soviet section. The space of the club was solved in a complex way, with the allocation of separate functional areas (tribune and screen, library, reading room, entrance and information corner, Lenin's corner, a chess playing area with a specially designed chess table), in a single color scheme(red, white, gray, black, the pavilion of K.S. Melnikov was painted in the same colors at the suggestion of Rodchenko).
Rodchenko has been engaged in photography since 1924. He is known psychological portraits relatives (“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 foreshortened photographs of buildings (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 “Great Illiteracy or Petty Muck”, he promoted a new, dynamic, documentary-accurate view of the world, 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 led the page "Photo in Cinema" in the magazine "Soviet Cinema", published articles on modern photography in the magazine "New Lef". Based on the photo section creative association"October" in 1930 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. Gryuntal, M.A. Kaufman. In 1932 he joined the Moscow Union of Artists as a book artist. But at the same time he worked in the presidium of the Union of Photographic Workers, was a member of the jury of photographic exhibitions sent in the 1930s by VOKS to Europe, America, and Asia.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was a photojournalist for the Evening Moscow newspaper, the magazines 30 Days, Give!, Pioneer, Ogonyok and Radio listener. At the same time he worked in the cinema (the artist of the films "Moscow in October", 1927, "Your Friend", 1927, "The Doll with Millions" and "Albidum", 1928) and the theater (productions of "Inga" and "Klop", 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 Oktyabr group in Moscow at the Press House, he exhibited a number of discussion photographs - taken from the bottom point of Pioneer and Pioneer Trumpeter, 1930; a series of dynamic shots “Vakhtan Sawmill”, 1931, which became the object of devastating criticism and accusations of Rodchenko in formalism and unwillingness to reorganize in accordance with the tasks of proletarian photography.
In 1932 he left the "October" and began working as a photojournalist in Moscow "Izogiz". In 1933 - graphic designer of the magazine "USSR at a Construction Site", photo albums "10 Years of Uzbekistan", "First Cavalry", "Red Army", "Soviet Aviation" and others (together with Stepanova). He was a member of the jury and designer of many photo exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the Trade Union of Film and Photo Workers. 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: “The Cinematography of Our Motherland”, “Kazakhstan”, “Moscow”, “Moscow Metro”, “300th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia”. In 1952 he was expelled from the MOSH, restored in 1955.
He died of a stroke and was buried at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.
Rodchenko's works are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts, the State Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow House of Photography, MoMA, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and other collections.
