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Alexander M. Rodchenko Russian Painter & Sculptor Russian (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1891 - 1956) View objects by this artist.

Russian painter, draftsman, sculptor, and photographer. Working in a wide range of media, he was one of the central figures of constructivism, a Russian abstract art movement that emerged in the period just before the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, but moved to the city of Kazan in 1907, and in 1911 enrolled at the Kazan Art School. After finishing there in 1914, he moved to Moscow to complete his studies, attending the Stroganov Artistic and Industrial Institute for two years. In the politically charged atmosphere that preceded the Russian Revolution, Rodchenko turned to abstraction, joining with other avant-garde artists who would soon define the constructivist movement. He abandoned freehand drawing in favor of abstract geometric drawings, which he executed using rulers, a compass, and a set square. The spare, flat series of works of 1915 gave way to more spatially complex, richly colored works in the later years of the decade.

In 1916 he participated in an exhibition organized by Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin. The following year, with Tatlin and other avant-garde artists, he helped design the interior of a cafe in Moscow. Starting in 1917 Rodchenko began to apply his experiments in drawing to the design of functional objects, creating, for example, a series of designs for lamps in 1918. Between 1919 and 1921 he produced three series of what he called spatial constructions—abstract, geometrical sculptures consisting of open forms in metal or wood.

In the 1920s Rodchenko created much graphic art, including posters and work for publishing houses, such as designs for books by his friend, Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Since 1919 he had been interested in collage and photomontage, two artistic techniques in which fragments of ready-made materials such as photographs or newspapers are pasted to a surface to form new compositions. After 1924 he increasingly devoted himself to photography, as well as to set and costume design for films. His photographs patriotically documented the new revolutionary Russia but were also notable for their original and artistic compositions, especially for the dramatic and unusual angles they employed. Although photography dominated his artistic output during the last period of his life, he continued to paint and draw.



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"Rodchenko, Aleksandr," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
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