And Rodchenko’s work. Legendary Soviet photographer Alexander Rodchenko

It so happened that photography became a branch of art with unknown heroes. It is worth asking any person about his favorite artist, poet or writer, and he will name several famous names. And if you ask to name your favorite photographer, few will be able to do it. But there is a genius in Russian photography that almost everyone knows. Even if not everyone is named, it would be hard to find someone who has never seen his work. This man is Alexander Rodchenko.

Biography

Alexander Rodchenko was born on December 5, 1891 in St. Petersburg. His father worked as a theater prop maker and was categorically against his son starting a career in the arts. He wanted Alexander to have a “normal” profession. Following his father’s wishes, Rodchenko received a specialized education and even worked for several years in his specialty as a prosthetist. But, having decided to stop practicing, at the age of 20 he entered the Kazan Art School, and after graduating he went on to study further - at the Stroganov School. From 1920 to 1930, Rodchenko held professorships at several art schools. In 1930-1931, he was involved in the creation of the October photo association. In 1932-1935 he worked as a correspondent at the Izogiz publishing house. During this period, Rodchenko created his debut series of sports photographs. From 1935 to 1938, he served as a member of the editorial board of the Soviet Photo magazine and began to specialize in photographing sporting events. One of the most famous photographs by the author of those years is “Sports Column”.

In 1938-1940, Rodchenko made a project about the Soviet circus, but due to the outbreak of war, the photographs were never published. During the war years he was evacuated, where he worked as the chief artist of the House of Technology. From 1945 to 1955, Rodchenko designed a number of albums dedicated to historical events, and also created a series of propaganda posters. In 1951, due to disagreements with the leadership, he was expelled from the Union of Artists, but three years later he was reinstated.

Creation

Alexander Rodchenko was a multifaceted personality. This is not just a photographer, but also a painter, designer and teacher. His greatest popularity came precisely thanks to his photographs, which, in terms of the technique and idea used, were significantly ahead of their time.

The master did not recognize canons and rules; he created his own style, which was included in textbooks during the author’s lifetime. The most famous, made in defiance of the dogmas of photographic art of those years, were the acutely documentary work “Portrait of a Mother,” as well as a series of photographs by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lily Brik.

Sometimes Rodchenko's approach turned out to be too progressive for his time, and some of his works were subject to a barrage of criticism. Thus, the famous photo “Pioneer Trumpeter” was considered politically incorrect - according to critics, the boy in the photo looked like a “well-fed bourgeois,” which did not correspond to the spirit of Soviet propaganda.

In the 1930s, the master filmed material about the construction of the White Sea Canal, and this shook his bright faith in the justice of socialism, and with it the desire to engage in propaganda work. That is why he became interested in the genre of sports photography and achieved serious success in it.

In sports photography, Rodchenko was able to fully use the style that later became his calling card -. This approach made it possible to “revive” and make even the most banal plot interesting.

One of the master’s most popular works was the photograph “Girl with a Watering Can,” which depicts his student Evgenia Lemberg. This masterpiece received worldwide recognition and in 1994 was sold at Christie's auction for 115 thousand pounds sterling.

The post-war years were marked by a black streak for Rodchenko. There was little work, barely enough money to live on, and the photographer often experienced periods of depression. In 1951, he was expelled from the Union of Artists for “deviating from socialist realism.”

Four years later it was restored, but Alexander Rodchenko did not have time to create new masterpieces - a few months later, on December 3, 1956, the heart of the genius of Russian photography stopped forever.

Influence on the development of photography

It is difficult to overestimate the influence that Alexander Rodchenko had on the development of Russian photography. He was a pioneer of the Russian avant-garde - he destroyed the established rules in photography and set new ones that corresponded to his vision. He became a luminary of Soviet propaganda, although later he suffered from the oppression of the system, despite his outstanding achievements.

Rodchenko wrote that he wanted to create photographs that he had never taken before; those that will surprise and amaze, reflecting life itself in its simplicity and complexity. Without a doubt, he succeeded, and the photographs taken by the master earned the right to be published in any modern book dedicated to photography.

Rodchenko Alexander Mikhailovich

(11/23) 12/5/1891, St. Petersburg - 12/3/1956, Moscow

Painter, graphic artist, photographer, designer, teacher, member of the constructivist group of INHUK (Institute of Artistic Culture), member of the "October" group, member of the Union of Artists in the graphic section

In 1911-1914 he studied at the Kazan Art School, and in 1916 he moved to Moscow. He 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 the Iso Narkompros (department of fine arts of the People's Commissariat of Education) as 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 the work of the Zhivskulptarch commission (commission for pictorial, sculptural and architectural synthesis). In the manifesto texts “Everything is Experience” and “Line” he recorded his creative credo. 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 1917-18 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 he showed at the exhibition “5x5=25” (Moscow) triptych of three monochrome colors (yellow, red, blue).

Simultaneously with 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” (1920-21) - 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.”

In 1920 he became a professor at the painting faculty, in 1922 - 1930 - a professor at the metalworking faculty of VKHUTEMAS-VKHUTEIN (Higher Art and Technical Workshops - Higher Art and Technical Institute). He taught students to design multifunctional objects for everyday life and public buildings, achieving expressiveness of form not through decoration, but through identifying the design of objects, ingenious inventions of transforming structures. In 1920-1924 he was a member of INHUK.

Since 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 New LEF magazine.

In 1925, he was sent to Paris to design the Soviet section of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Art Industry, and carried out his interior design project for the “Workers’ Club”.

From 1924 he was engaged in photography. Known for his acutely documentary psychological portraits of loved ones (“Portrait of a Mother”, 1924), friends and acquaintances from LEF (portraits of Mayakovsky, L. and O. Brik, Aseev, Tretyakov), artists and architects (Vesnin, Gan, 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).

In the late 20s and early 30s he was a photojournalist for the newspaper “Evening Moscow”, magazines “30 days”, “Daesh”, “Pioneer”, “Ogonyok” and “Radio Listener”. At the same time he worked in cinema (designer of the films “Moscow in October”, 1927, “Journalist”, 1927-28, “Doll with Millions” and “Albidum”, 1928) and theater (productions “Inga” and “Bedbug”, 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 “October” group in Moscow at the House of Press, he exhibited a number of controversial photographs - taken from the bottom point of “Pioneer Girl” and “Pioneer Trumpeter”, 1930; a series of dynamic shots “Vakhtan Sawmill”, 1931 - which served as a target for devastating criticism and accusations of formalism and unwillingness to rebuild in accordance with the tasks of “proletarian photography”.

In 1932 he left Oktyabr and became a photojournalist in Moscow for the Izogiz publishing house. Since 1933, he worked as a graphic designer for the magazine “USSR in Construction”, photo albums “10 Years of Uzbekistan”, “First Cavalry”, “Red Army”, “Soviet Aviation” and others (together with his wife V. Stepanova). He continued painting in 30s and 40s. He was a jury member and designer of many photo exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the professional union of film photographers, was a member of the Moscow Union of Artists of the USSR (Moscow organization of the Union of Artists of the USSR) since 1932. In 1936 he participated in the “Exhibition of Soviet Masters photographic art." Since 1928, he regularly sent his works 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 Masters of Art book series). M., 1989

Alexandr M. Rodchenko, Varvara F. Stepanova: The Future Is Our Only Goal. Munich, 1991

A.N. Lavrentyev. Rodchenko's angles. M., 1992

Alexander Lavrentiev. Alexander Rodchenko. Photography. 1924-1954. Koln, 1995

Alexander Rodchenko. Experiments for the future. M., 1996

Alexandr Rodchenko. (Published in conjunction with the exhibition Alexandr Rodchenko at the Museum of Modern Art). New York, 1998

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 “restructure” 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.

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, artist Varvara Stepanova, simultaneously practicing photography, painting, graphics, book design, sculpture and advertising design.

In photography, Rodchenko put documentary quality and realism of the images he created in the first place. He is responsible for innovation in the field of experiments with angular composition of the frame and photographic points.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born in 1891, his father worked as a theater props maker. At first he studied to become a dental technician, but his passion for painting eventually prevailed, 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 artistic projects.

Rodchenko was actively interested in painting and worked on creating abstract compositions. For some time he devoted himself to the so-called production art, which involved the creation of utilitarian objects without any artistic content.

After the revolution of 1917, Rodchenko became one of the secretaries of the trade union of painters in Moscow, organizing the necessary conditions for the creativity of young artists. During this period, he tried his hand at decorating the Pittoresk cafe in Moscow and at the same time headed the Museum Bureau. His life in art is a constant experiment involving 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 collapsing structures from flat cardboard elements. In the early 20s, he was engaged in teaching, teaching his students the basics of creating multifunctional objects for everyday life and public buildings.

Creative experiments gradually led Rodchenko to photography, which he considered an absolutely necessary means of expression for any modern artist. His portrait and reportage photographs, as well as interesting collages using both his own photographs and magazine clippings, immediately attracted attention to him.

Rodchenko’s photographs began to be published in such publications as “Evening Moscow”, “Soviet Photo”, “Dash”, “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 photomontages for the design of the publication of Mayakovsky’s poem “About This” in 1923, which even served as the beginning of the emergence of a new direction in modern art - book illustration and design.

Two years later, at the International Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, Rodchenko’s advertising posters were awarded a silver medal. At the same time, he turned to classical portraiture in photography - portraits of Mayakovsky, Aseev, Tretyakov, Melnikov and other representatives of art. In 1926, the magazine “Soviet Cinema” also published his first perspective photographs of buildings, including the series of photographs “House on Myasnitskaya” and “House of Mosselprom”.

What distinguished Alexander Rodchenko from other photographers of the 20s? The fact is that photography of that time was characterized by the creation of images with a horizontal composition and a rectilinear perspective. 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 constitute its essence, movement.

In photography, Rodchenko sought to reveal the content of an object or an entire phenomenon. To do this, he skillfully “played” with photographic angles, used contrasting chiaroscuro and worked on the original compositional structure of the frame.

Alexander Rodchenko went down in the history of Russian and world photography as the author of unique photographs taken from a variety of angles, from an unusual and unusual angle for the human eye. He believed that every photographer should “remove the veil from the eyes called the navel... and shoot from all points except the navel until all points are recognized.”

In the 30s, 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 spirit of the times and revolutionary romanticism, Rodchenko became interested in sports photography and photography of the unusual world of the 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 Donskoye 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 discovered many new outstanding names - Arkady Shaikhet, Max Alpert, and others.

In 1998, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted a large-scale exhibition of works by Alexander Rodchenko, which included all his best projects in the field of painting, graphics and photography.

Alexander Rodchenko is as much a symbol of Soviet photography as Vladimir Mayakovsky is of Soviet poetry. Western photographers, from the founders of the Magnum photo agency to modern stars like Albert Watson, still use the techniques Rodchenko introduced into the photographic medium. In addition, if it were not for Rodchenko, there would be no modern design, which was greatly influenced by his posters, collages and interiors. Unfortunately, the rest of Rodchenko’s work has been forgotten - and yet he not only took photographs and drew posters, but was also involved in painting, sculpture, theater and architecture.

Anatoly Skurikhin. Alexander Rodchenko at the construction of the White Sea Canal. 1933© Museum “Moscow House of Photography”

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

Alexander Rodchenko. The building of the newspaper "Izvestia". 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Spatial photo animation “Self-Beasts”. 1926© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Rodchenko and art

Alexander Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg in 1891 into the family of a theater prop maker. Since childhood, he was involved in the world of art: the apartment was located directly above the stage, through which you had to pass to go down to the street. In 1901 the family moved to Kazan. First, Alexander decides to study to become a dental technician. However, he soon abandoned this profession and became a volunteer student at the Kazan Art School (he could not enter there due to the lack of a certificate of secondary education: Rodchenko graduated from only four classes of the parochial school).

In 1914, futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burlyuk and Vasily Kamensky came to Kazan. Rodchenko went to their evening and wrote in his diary: “The evening ended, and the excited, but in different ways, audience slowly dispersed. Enemies and fans. The latter are few. Clearly, I was not only a fan, but much more, I was a follower.” This evening became a turning point: it was after it that a volunteer student at the Kazan Art School, keen on Gauguin and the World of Art, realized that he wanted to connect his life with futuristic art. In the same year, Rodchenko met his future wife, a student of the same Kazan art school, Varvara Stepanova. At the end of 1915, Rodchenko, following Stepanova, moved to Moscow.

Rodchenko, Tatlin and Malevich

Once in Moscow, through mutual friends Alexander met Vladimir Tatlin, one of the leaders of the avant-garde, and he invited Rodchenko to take part in the futuristic exhibition “Shop”. Instead of an entry fee, the artist is asked to help with the organization - selling tickets and telling visitors about the meaning of the works. At the same time, Rodchenko met Kazimir Malevich, but, unlike Tatlin, he did not feel sympathy for him, and Malevich’s ideas seemed alien to him. Rodchenko is more interested in Tatlin's sculptural paintings and his interest in construction and materials than Malevich's thoughts on pure art. Later, Rodchenko would write about Tatlin: “I learned everything from him: attitude to the profession, to things, to material, to food and all life, and this left a mark for the rest of my life... Of all the modern artists I have met, there is no equal to him".

Kazimir Malevich. White on white. 1918 MoMA‎

Alexander Rodchenko. From the series “Black on Black”. 1918© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / MoMA‎

In response to Malevich’s “White on White,” Rodchenko wrote a series of works, “Black on Black.” These seemingly similar works solve opposite problems: with the help of monochrome, Rodchenko uses the texture of the material as a new property of pictorial art. Developing the idea of ​​a new art inspired by science and technology, for the first time he uses “non-artistic” tools - a compass, a ruler, a roller.

Rodchenko and photomontage

Rodchenko was one of the first in the Soviet Union to recognize the potential of photomontage as a new art form and began experimenting with this technique in the field of illustration and propaganda. The advantage of photomontage over painting and photography is obvious: due to the absence of distracting elements, a laconic collage becomes the most vivid and accurate way of non-verbal transmission of information.

Working in this technique will bring Rodchenko all-Union fame. He illustrates magazines, books, and creates advertising and propaganda posters.

“Advertising designers” Mayakovsky and Rodchenko

Rodchenko is considered one of the ideologists of constructivism, a movement in art where form completely merges with function. An example of such constructivist thinking is the 1925 “Book” advertising poster. El Lissitzky’s poster “Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge” is taken as a basis, while Rodchenko leaves only a geometric design from it - a triangle invading the space of a circle - and fills it with a completely new meaning. He is no longer an artist-creator, he is an artist-designer.

Alexander Rodchenko. Poster "Lengiz: books on all branches of knowledge." 1924 TASS

El Lissitzky. Poster “Beat the whites with a red wedge!” 1920 Wikimedia Commons

In 1920, Rodchenko met Mayakovsky. After a rather curious incident related to the advertising campaign “” (Mayakovsky criticized Rodchenko’s slogan, thinking that it was written by some second-rate poet, thereby seriously offending Rodchenko), Mayakovsky and Rodchenko decide to join forces. Mayakovsky comes up with the text, Rodchenko is in charge of the graphic design. The creative association “Advertising-constructor “Mayakovsky - Rodchenko”” is responsible for the 1920s posters of GUM, Mosselprom, Rezinotrest and other Soviet organizations.

Creating new posters, Rodchenko studied Soviet and foreign photographic magazines, cutting out everything that might be useful, communicated closely with photographers who helped him shoot unique subjects, and eventually, in 1924, bought his own camera. And he instantly becomes one of the main photographers in the country.

Rodchenko the photographer

Rodchenko began taking photographs quite late, being already an established artist, illustrator and teacher at VKHUTEMAS. He transfers the ideas of constructivism into new art, showing space and dynamics in the photograph through lines and planes. From the array of these experiments, two important techniques can be identified that Rodchenko discovered for world photography and which are still relevant today.

Alexander Rodchenko. Sukharevsky Boulevard. 1928© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Pioneer trumpeter. 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Ladder. 1930© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

Alexander Rodchenko. Girl with a Leica camera. 1934© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

The first step is angles. For Rodchenko, photography is a way to convey new ideas to society. In the era of airplanes and skyscrapers, this new art should teach us to see from all sides and show familiar objects from unexpected points of view. Rodchenko is particularly interested in top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This one of the most popular techniques today became a real revolution in the twenties.

The second technique is called diagonal. Even in painting, Rodchenko identified the line as the basis of any image: “The line is the first and the last, both in painting and in any design in general.” It is the line that will become the main constructive element in his further work - photo-montage, architecture and, of course, photography. Most often, Rodchenko will use the diagonal, since, in addition to the structural load, it also carries the necessary dynamics; a balanced, static composition is another anachronism that he will actively fight against.

Rodchenko and socialist realism

In 1928, the magazine “Soviet Photo” published a slanderous letter accusing Rodchenko of plagiarizing Western art. This attack turned out to be a harbinger of more serious troubles - in the thirties, avant-garde figures were condemned one after another for formalism. Rodchenko was very upset by the accusation: “How can it be, I am with all my soul for Soviet power, I work with faith and love for it with all my might, and suddenly we are wrong,” he wrote in his diary.

After this work, Rodchenko again falls into favor. Now he is among the creators of a new, “proletarian” aesthetics. His photographs of physical culture parades are the apotheosis of the socialist realist idea and a vivid example for young painters (among his students is Alexander Deineka). But since 1937, relations with the authorities went wrong again. Rodchenko does not accept the totalitarian regime that is coming into force, and his work no longer brings him satisfaction.

Rodchenko in the 1940-50s

After the war, Rodchenko created almost nothing - he only designed books and albums together with his wife. Tired of politics in art, he turns to pictorialism, a movement that appeared in photography back in the eighties of the 19th century. Pictorialist photographers tried to get away from the nature-like nature of photography and shot with special soft-focus lenses, changing the light and shutter speed to create a picturesque effect and bring photography closer to painting.. He is interested in classical theater and circus - after all, these are the last areas where politics does not determine the artistic program. The New Year’s letter from his daughter Varvara says a lot about Rodchenko’s mood and creativity at the end of the forties: “Daddy! I would like you to draw something to go with your works this year. Don’t think that I want you to do everything in “socialist realism”. No, so that you can do as you can do. And every minute, every day I remember that you are sad and don’t draw. I think you would be more fun then and know that you can do these things. I kiss you and wish you a Happy New Year, Mulya.”

In 1951, Rodchenko was expelled from the Union of Artists and only four years later, thanks to the endless energy of Varvara Stepanova, he was reinstated. Alexander Rodchenko died in 1956, just a short time before his first photographic and graphic exhibition, also organized by Stepanova.

The material was prepared jointly with the Multimedia Art Museum for the exhibition “Experiments for the Future”.

Sources

• Rodchenko A. Revolution in photography.
• Rodchenko A. Photography is an art.
• Rodchenko A., Tretyakov S. Self-beasts.
• Rodchenko A. M. Experiments for the future.
• Visiting Rodchenko and Stepanova!