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One of the 20th century's most influential movements amounted to nothing less than an attack on art. In 1922, a Russian artist named Aleksei Gan penned a manifesto that began with words in glaring uppercase: "WE DECLARE UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART!" The Russian Revolution had taken place five years earlier, in 1917. The country was in the process of freeing itself from the grips of a powerful ruling elite; now it would revolutionize Russia's cultural life, too, and put art to work in service of a new, Communist society.

Gan and his artistic compatriots-including Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, considered the founders of the movement known as Constructivism, as well as Varvara Stepanova, Liubov Popova, El Lissitzky, and others-sought new art forms and modes of making art to serve the masses. Art, they believed, had no place in the hermetic space of the artist's studio. Instead, it should reflect the modern, industrial world; be formulated in laboratories and factories; and be deployed as an active agent in the broader Communist revolution. Together, the Constructivists would seek "to find the Communist expression of material construction," Gan wrote, "to establish a scientific base for the approach to constructing buildings and services that would fulfill the demands of Communist culture."

What is Constructivism?

Hanging Spatial Construction No. 9, Original work 1920-1921 / Edition 1993

The movement emphasized building and science, rather than artistic expression, and its goals went far beyond the realm of art. The Constructivists sought to influence architecture, design, fashion, and all mass-produced objects. In place of painterly concerns with composition, Constructivists were interested in construction. Rather than emerging from an expressive impulse or an academic tradition, art was to be built.

A new, Constructivist art would look toward industrial production; approach the artist as an engineer, rather than an easel painter; and serve the proletariat. Constructivists used sparse, geometric forms and modest materials. From paintings to posters to textiles, they created a visual language out of forms that can be drawn with utilitarian instruments like compasses and rulers. They placed visual culture under the microscope, analyzing materials like wood, glass, and metal, to judge them for their value and fitness for use in mass-produced images and objects.

Influenced by and closely associated with the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Naum Gabo, as well as Cubism, Futurism, and Suprematism-the latter being the Russian avant-garde movement pioneered by Kasimir Malevich, famous for his iconic Black Square (1915)-the Constructivists sought to break art down into its most fundamental parts, challenge the legitimacy of established traditions, and create an art form relevant to a rapidly changing world.

Boris Arvatov, an important Constructivist theorist associated with Moscow's Institute of Artistic Culture, where abstract painting pioneer Kandinsky also taught, suggested that modern art developed along an axis that could be pegged to three groundbreaking artists: Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Tatlin.

The icons of Constructivism

Painterly Relief, 1914-1916

"In Search of 0,10 - The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting" at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen

Constructivism began with Vladimir Tatlin, a Russian artist who was profoundly impacted by a visit to Picasso's studio in 1913. There, he saw the artist's experimentations with collaged objects. In 1915, Tatlin demonstrated the influence of the Spanish artist in his own abstract, three-dimensional collages made of metal and wood, which he showed alongside Malevich's Suprematist paintings at what was called the "Last Futurist Exhibition" of that year.

By 1917, during the first throes of the Russian Revolution, Tatlin had begun to conceive of a monument to the seismic social changes that were taking place. Two years later, in 1919, he began developing a design for the Monument to the Third International, known simply as "Tatlin's Tower." A wooden curvilinear model spiraling upwards, it became an icon of Constructivism even in its own time, and was intended to host The Third International, an organization that advocated for global Communist revolution. Though never built, Tatlin's tower made waves in the sculpture, architecture, and design communities, and came to be considered an icon of utopian design that has inspired (and been quoted in) several films.

Russian artist El Lissitzky's Proun Room (1923), another exemplary work of the Constructivist movement, is an installation of dynamic abstract forms-primarily rectangles-that appear to float, propelling the viewer around the space. Lissitzky and other Constructivists sought to "activate" the viewer, thereby awakening a mass consciousness. Similarly, Lissitzky's Abstract Cabinet (1927-28), made for the Landesmuseum of Hannover, Germany, but destroyed in World War II, was a modular space that actually responded to the viewer's participation. The walls, constructed of a series of vertical laths, would change in appearance as the viewer walked by, from dark to light and back again.

Alexander Rodchenko would craft objects from a similar impulse, such as his "Spatial Constructions" (1918-21), which consist of concentric geometric shapes. When suspended from the ceiling, the "Spatial Construction" transforms from a flat, two-dimensional artwork into a kinetic sculpture responsive to its environment.

This kind of experimentation with activating a viewer-and, by extension, the masses-would go well beyond the space of the art museum. Constructivism made leaps and bounds in the field of graphic design, primarily at the hands of Rodchenko, who advocated for the incorporation of avant-garde art activity into everyday life. Rodchenko's bold designs, using stark geometric forms and striking diagonal lines, were used in propaganda posters, such as his famous Books (Please)! In All Branches of Knowledge poster, made in 1924. The photograph of a woman shouting the titular cry appears within a frame of crisp, linear forms that extend outward, giving the artwork a sonic dimension.

Kasimir Severinovich Malevich

Suprematist Composition, 1915

"In Search of 0,10 - The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting" at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen

The Constructivists harnessed form and design to advance concrete social and political goals, a phenomenon that came to be known as "agitprop"-a combination of the words "agitation" and "propaganda." Between 1919 and 1922, the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) published more than 1,500 original posters to be placed in vacant windows, a project that came to be known as "ROSTA Windows." Artists like Rodchenko, Valentina Kulagina, and Viktor Koretsky used photomontage techniques to create posters that would speak to the social and political concerns of citizens, both locally and globally. Kulagina's posters mobilized workers, particularly women workers, with bright and bold forms and text.

Textile designers Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova, meanwhile, were, as art historian Christina Kiaer has written, "the only Constructivists to see their designs for everyday, utilitarian things actually mass-produced and distributed in the Soviet economy." Both artists had started out as painters, and Popova herself joined Malevich's Suprematist group in 1916. Though Popova and Stepanova have different backgrounds-Popova was born into a wealthy family in Moscow, while Stepanova, five years younger, came from peasant origins-both artists ended up working at the First State Cotton-Printing Factory in Moscow.

The same flat, geometric forms in their paintings can be seen in their textile designs, which are characterized by their regularity and formal simplicity. Creating Constructivist textiles meant that Popova and Stepanova were making avant-garde art within the very means of production that served the masses. A 1924 photograph of Stepanova wearing a dress made with her own fabric design, taken by her fellow Constructivist and life partner Rodchenko, shows just how livable avant-garde design could be. Relaxed and casual in her shift dress, paired with sandals, Stepanova exemplifies the artist as producer.

Why does Constructivism matter?

In keeping with its global aims for Communist revolution, Constructivism was taken up by artists in other countries, too, especially in Germany-where László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus felt its influence-and in Latin America. Though Constructivism as a historical movement had ended by the 1930s, when avant-garde activity became increasingly distasteful to the Communist regime, its influence could be felt throughout much of the 20th century.

Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, for example, are well-known for their neo-Constructivist works of the 1950s and '60s. Though their works share many formal similarities with Constructivism, such as flatness, geometry, and a system-based approach to artmaking, their affinities run much deeper. Clark and Oiticica's later work would commit itself to making participants out of its viewers, activating them with pieces that could be rearranged or even worn performatively, as in Oiticica's "Parangolés" (1964-79).

Constructivism radically reimaged the role of the artist as an engineer with tools, rather than an academy painter with a brush. The Constructivists conceived of artworks as part of a greater visual program of awakening the masses toward revolution, and an awareness of class divisions and other social inequalities. Its ripple effects on art of the 20th century can be seen not only in movements like Brazilian neo-Constructivism, but also in Minimalism, which sought to further reduce form down to its most essential elements.

Portrait of Gustav Klutsis by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

Jenna Gribbon, Luncheon on the grass, a recurring dream, 2020. Jenna Gribbon, April studio, parting glance, 2021. Jenna Gribbon, Silver Tongue, 2019

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One of the 20th century's most influential movements amounted to nothing less than an attack on art. In 1922, a Russian artist named Aleksei Gan penned a manifesto that began with words in glaring uppercase: "WE DECLARE UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART!" The Russian Revolution had taken place five years earlier, in 1917.

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Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, at a time when the revolution of 1917 had been consolidated and the new Soviet government was building a new communist society.

Through the 1920s the Constructivists developed radical new architecture, graphic design, film and photography, and pioneered design styles for the new mass production techniques that were helping turn Russia from an agricultural society to an industrial one.

Centrally, the Constructivists rejected the idea of art being autonomous from the rest of society: to them, all art and design was a political tool. In short, Russia was their canvas, the building of the new Soviet nation an art project of gigantic scale.

Suprematism

Russian artists took Cubism (opens in new tab) to its logical conclusion, developing Suprematism (opens in new tab), a philosophy that sought to free art, design and architecture from dependence on traditional forms of representation.

This new visual grammar was designed to allow free combination of primitive shapes, which were to serve as the building blocks for strange new artistic and architectural worlds.

Graphic design and photography

The Constructivists applied this abstract visual grammar with remarkable consistency across a wide range of design disciplines. Early Soviet graphic design is thus an unlikely mix of high avant-garde theory and political propaganda.

Architecture

Constructivist architecture introduced a strange new alien dimension to Russia's ancient skylines. Throughout the 1920s, stark unadorned structures modelling bold combinations perfect squares, cylinders and circles arose alongside the elaborate timeworn cupulas and spires of the Orthodox Church.

As in the realm of graphic design, the Constructivists applied an uncompromising Suprematist visual grammar to the design of factories, high rise complexes, workers clubs and radio towers.

A sudden end

The Constructivist experiment was stopped in its tracks when government power struggles following the death of Lenin in 1924 ended in Stalin's dictatorial rule.

The Stalinists considered the Constructivist aesthetic too rarefied to serve as an effective instrument of state propaganda, ruling that all future design should abide by the conservative neoclassical style of Socialist Realism (opens in new tab).

Constructivist designers who refused to co-operate retired from public life, fled Russia, ended up in the Gulag, or received a visit from state police in the early hours of the night.

Legacy

Constructivist buildings from the 1920s still dot the contemporary Russian landscape, poignant reminders of an imagined future that never came to pass.

The movement's true legacy, however, consists not so much in the specifics of what was actually built and designed during the 1920s, but in the realm of dreams: the manifestos, theories, blueprints, and plans they left behind, unrealised.

Bauhaus and flat design

The Constructivist visual style of clean lines, pure shapes, flat colours and formal order is still instantly recognisable in design today. It was transmitted by way of the Bauhaus and the New Typographers of Weimar Germany to the Swiss designers of the 1950s and 1960s, who developed the International Style that continues to set the parameters for much contemporary design: witness for example the current trend for flat design amongst digital designers.

The Constructivists' rigorous, unsentimental, systematic methodology still informs professional design practices today, which continues to insist that design issues are problems to be solved through objective process, not opportunities for personal expression.

This is an edited version of Justin's original article, which you can read on his blog (opens in new tab).

Words: Justin Reynolds (opens in new tab)
Justin Reynolds is a web designer, blogger and copywriter based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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The easy guide to design movements: Constructivism

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Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, at a time when the revolution of 1917 had been consolidated and the new Soviet government was building a new communist society.

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"The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people."

"The investigation of material volume and construction made it possible for us in 1918, in an artistic form, to begin to combine materials like iron and glass, the materials of modern Classicism, comparable in their severity with the marble of antiquity. In this way, an opportunity emerges of uniting purely artistic forms with utilitarian intentions.... The results of this are models which stimulate us to inventions in our work of creating a new world, and which call upon the producers to exercise controls over the forms encountered in our everyday life."

"Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. It must be spread everywhere - on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes."

"We hold that the fundamental features of the present age is the triumph of the constructive method.... Every organized work - whether it be a house, a poem, or a picture - is an object directed toward a particular end, which is calculated not to turn people away from life, but to summon them to make their contribution toward life's organization."

El Lissitsky and Ilya Ehrenberg

Summary of Constructivism

Constructivism was the most influential modern art movement in twentieth century Russia. With its aesthetic roots fixed firmly in the Suprematism movement, Constructivism came fully to the fore as the art of a young Soviet Union after the revolution of 1917. The movement was conceived of out of a need for a new aesthetic language; one benefitting of a progressive new era in Soviet socialist history. Constructivism also borrowed elements of other European avant-gardes, notably Cubism and Futurism, and at its heart was the idea that artmaking should be approached as a process of cerebral "construction".

Released from the old romantic notion of being tied to the studio and the easel, Constructivist artists were reborn as technicians and/or engineers who, much like scientists, were seeking solutions to modern problems. By the early 1920s Constructivist art had evolved to accommodate the idea of Productivism which took the aesthetic principles of Constructivism and applied them to "everyday" art such as photography, fashion, graphic and textile design, cinema, and theater. Nevertheless, by the early 1930s the Soviet avant-garde had rudely fallen foul of the new regime that wished to promote the more transparent style of Socialist Realism.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

The shared goal of the founders of Constructivism was to produce artworks and buildings using modern materials and designs that would awaken the proletariat to imperialist class divisions and other bourgeois inequalities. The Constructionists sought, in Aleksei Gan's words, "to find the Communist expression of material construction [and] to establish a scientific base for the approach to constructing buildings and services that would fulfil the demands of Communist culture".

Constructivism became closely aligned with the idea of agitprop (agitational propaganda) which applied to an artwork that aimed to educate and indoctrinate its audience to the prevailing Bolshevik cause. By employing arrangements of basic industrial geometric forms and colors the new Soviet Union would be represented by the new languages of industry and modernity. However, most of the country were semi/illiterate land workers, and these remote communities were reached through Agit Trains. These featured (amongst other things) purpose-built cinemas which delivered the Bolshevik message through unambiguous propaganda films, known as agitki.

Once evolved into Productivism, Constructivist art promoted the idea of an industrial production must directly address the needs of the proletariat. Without abandoning their commitment to basic geometric shapes and colors, Productivists moved away from abstraction and engaged with design activities including furniture design, ceramics, textile design, graphic design and advertising, and theater set design.

Constructivist art often aimed to demonstrate how materials behaved and to test, for instance, the properties of materials such as wood, glass, and metal. The form an artwork would take would be dictated by its materials rather than in traditional art practice whereby the artist transforms his or her base materials into something different (and possibly beautiful). These inquiries were often in and of themselves. For many Constructivists, this entailed a commitment to the "truth to materials", that being, the belief that materials should be employed only in accordance with their capacities, and in such a way that demonstrated the uses to which they should be put.

Overview of Constructivism

Calling his Proun paintings "the station where one changes from painting to architecture," El Lissitzky's architectonic works became a bridge between the diverse disciplines within Constructivism.

Artworks and Artists of Constructivism

Constructed Head No. 2

Artist: Naum Gabo

While visiting his brother Antoine Pevsner in Paris in 1913-14, Gabo was introduced to Cubist sculpture by Alexander Archipenko and others involved with the avant-garde. He then moved with Pevsner to Oslo during the First World War. It was in the Norwegian capital that the brothers first encountered the work of Vladimir Tatlin. Gabo began to experiment with Constructivist principles, working with modern industrial materials including glass, metal, and plastic. Constructed Head No. 2, which embodies both Cubist (it bears a close resemblance to Picasso's bust of his lover, Fernande) and Constructivist principles, was executed in celluloid and galvanized metal. Here, however, Gabo uses his materials to form his figures, rather than letting the material dictate the artwork. It was one of Gabo's first works and pre-empted the abstract kinetic sculptures, through which he explored the relationship between space and time, and for which he would become best known.

However, Gabo (and Pevsner) baulked at the idea that art should express specific political doctrines, or that it should meet prescribed utilitarian goals. Indeed, on their return to Russia (after the Revolution) Gabo and Pevsner were alarmed to find that Constructivist art was so inextricably bound up with agitprop, that being the belief that art and propaganda were conjoined, and that art must "awaken" (or agitate) its audience to the Bolshevik cause. In response, the men co-authored the "Realistic Manifesto" of Constructivism in 1920 which was printed on newspaper and distributed on the streets of Moscow. Like the Constructivists, they espoused the value geometric shapes and industrial materials, but they insisted that "true art" must be independent of all state interests. Gabo, therefore, never "fully qualified" as a principal Constructivist and became better known, in fact, outside of Russia in Germany, England and, lastly, the United States.

Galvanized iron and celluloid - Private Collection

Monument to the Third International

Artist: Vladimir Tatlin

In 1917, with the anticipation of a socialist revolution hanging heavy in the air, Tatlin had started to conceive of a mammoth structure that would commemorate this momentous turning point in Soviet history. By 1920 he had finalized his design for the now famous Tatlin Tower, or to give it its full title, the Monument to the Third International, or Comintern, (a committee established to overthrow the international bourgeoisie and to work towards the establishment of an "international Soviet Republic"). The original Tower was a spiralling 15-foot-high wooden structure that, although never put into construction, became an emblem to Communist utopianism and, to this day, remains the great symbol of the Constructivist movement.

The Tower was a blueprint for a fully functional conference center for the Comintern and, had it been built, would, at 400 meters (1,300 feet) been the tallest steel structure in the world (not only one-third taller, but more beautiful, from a Soviet perspective, than the Eiffel Tower). The upward spiralling tower, anchored by a diagonal girder, was to include three rotating glass units. These were a cylinder, which would house the legislature and revolve once over a period of a year; a cone designed to hold the government's executive offices, which would revolve once a month; and a smaller cylinder, that rotated daily, would house the press office. Atop this structure would sit an hourly rotating hemisphere that would contain a radio station and project Bolshevik slogans onto the clouds. The Tatlin Tower would symbolize industrialism and construction, and the dynamism of the modern age.

St. Petersburg, Russia

Stage set design for, The Magnanimous Cuckold

Artist: Lyubov Popova

Popova was one of the key figures within the early Russian avant-garde. She experimented first with abstract and semi-abstract Cubo-futurist painting which featured overlapping planes and dynamic juxtapositions of shapes and colors. She arrived at Constructivism, via Suprematism, maintaining her interest in dynamism and movement, and in geometry and the efficiency of machines. By the early 1920s she had moved away from painting to follow her faith in Productivism which brought Constructivism into the everyday lives of ordinary Russians through such mediums as fabric, graphic, book cover, and stage design.

Opening at the Actor's Theater, Moscow, on April 25, 1922, Vsevolod Meyerhold's landmark production of Belgian dramatist Fernand Crommelynk's farce, The Magnanimous Cuckold, brought Constructivist art into popular theater. Meyerhold was known for his "biomechanical exercises" whereby the human body was treated as an "apparatus" that would synthesize with a set which was itself conceived of as a machine. Actors would thus express themselves through forceful gestural performances that would combine with the moving set to "agitate" the audience. Meyerhold had asked Popova to design a stage that could respond to the athletic gestures and twists and turns of his performers' nonverbal cues and, at a more practical level, to design a set that could be easily and quickly dismantled and reassembled with the view of touring the production to other Russian cities.

Historian Marc Arthur writes, "Magnanimous Cuckold was a tragic farce about a desperately cuckolded husband who punished his wife by insisting that she sleep with every man in the village [...] Popova's interactive set, consisting of multi-level platforms, staircases, revolving doors, and three wheels, the largest containing the letters "CR ML NCK" (the playwrights' name), that could be spun by the performers, it was a hilarious, circus-like performance that was part vaudeville and part athletic demonstration. Popova also designed the boxy, primary-colored worker uniforms of the actors".

Oil on canvas - Tretyakov Gallery

Proun Room

Artist: El Lissitzky

Of all the Constructivists, it was perhaps Lissitzky who maintained the closest ties to Suprematism. Between 1919-27, he worked extensively on his Proun ("Projects for the Affirmation of the New") series. For this project he produced many Suprematist-inspired paintings that contrasted light and dark, and created architectural and three-dimensional space within a two-dimensional image. The effect was the illusion of geometric forms floating in space, which, for Lissitzky, was symbolic of the transformation of Russian art into a way of life.

In his Proun Room, unveiled at the Great Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1923, he extended what had been two-dimensional works into an installation. His Room consisted of geometric shapes, in colors of black, white, and gray, and linear wooden vectors that reached across floor, wall, and ceiling (six surfaces in all). Lissitzky was exploring the idea that art should establish a new and elementary balance between art and living space and his ideas exerted great influence over the teachings at the Bauhaus and De Stijl schools.

Installation - Great Art Exhibition, Berlin

Still from Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera

In 1923, Dziga Vertov published his "Kino-Eye" (Cinema Eye) manifesto. He wrote: "I am an eye. A mechanical eye [...] This is what I am, a machine that runs in chaotic manoeuvres, recording movements one after the other, assembling them in a patchwork. Freed from the constraints of time and space, I organize each point of the universe as I wish. My route is that of a new conception of the world. I can make you discover the world you did not know existed". Although not to everyone's tastes (Eisenstein, probably Russia's greatest exponent of formalist filmmaking, dismissed the film as "pointless camera hooliganism"), his Man with a Movie Camera stands as the pinnacle of his vision and many believe that it was the last of the great Soviet agitprop films (in 2012 the British Film Institute's journal, Sight and Sound, voted Man with a Movie Camera 8 th in its survey of the best films ever made).

The film, divided into six numbered sections, has no human agent to carry a plot with that role taken on by the camera (operated by Vertov's brother, Mikhail Kaufman). It represents "day in the life" scenarios in three unidentified Soviet cities (it was shot in Moscow, Kyiv, and Odesa) that are populated with people from different economic classes. The movie, co-edited with Yelizaveta Svilova (Vertov's wife) makes use of any number of avant-garde montage techniques - precipitous juxtaposition, double-exposure, slowed down, speeded up, and stop motion photography (a walking camera tripod, for instance), superimposition (the cameraman filming from inside a beer glass for instance), and so on - and is described in its credits as an "experiment in cinematic communication of visible events".

MoMA of New York said of the director, "Like others of his generation, Vertov believed that the creation of an objective 'cinema eye' would, in destroying old habits of viewing, help build a new, proletarian society". Indeed, on the film's release, Vertov (who just a few years earlier had been honing his technique on agitki propaganda films for the Agit Trains) issued a statement which read: "This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature". However, Vertov's unwavering commitment to avant-garde experimentation saw him marginalized by the early 1930s when Constructivism (in Russia at least) was rudely usurped by Socialist Realism.

The Results of the First Five-Year Plan

Artist: Varvara Stepanova

Photomontage became, perhaps, the favored medium of avant-garde artists such as El Lissitzky, Rodchenko and Stepanova. Stepanova (Rodchenko's life partner) was a leading member of this group and later in her career she contributed to the journal USSR in Construction which published between 1930-41. The journal, which was published in English, was intended mostly for overseas markets, and was a propagandist publication that celebrated Russia's technological, agricultural, and social progress under the totalitarian rule of Joseph Stalin. But the journal was unusual in that it published images that went against the regime's preference for Social Realist art.

Stepanova restricts this image to three color tones - black, white, red - with red geometric planes giving the photomontage a sense of narrative structure. The montage features found photographs which sit in front of her geometric planes. The speakers and the number 5 on the left reference Stalin's Five-Year Plan and the letters CCCP (USSR) face the dominant portrait of Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union (who, incidentally, had not liked Constructivist art but backed its goals and principles) who is looking forward towards the future. Art historian Jessica Watson writes, "Historical hindsight can make it difficult for contemporary viewers to engage the overtly propagandistic aspects of these images, in fact their exaggerated euphoria can even be mistaken for irony. Nevertheless, despite our increasingly sophisticated understanding of the distinction between image and reality, Stepanova's photomontages are an important reminder of how an artist can blur the line between aesthetic passion and ideology".

State Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow

Beginnings of Constructivism

Roots in Suprematism

Suprematism was a radical abstract art that, mostly through the efforts of Kazimir Malevich, went in search of a "zero degree" in art; that being the point at which art could be reduced to its "vanishing point". Malevich reduced art to basic shapes (squares, circles, crosses) as a means of making art that was about the "supremacy of feeling" over pictorial art that was always about "meaning". In 1915, Malevich was joined by Russian artists Kseniya Boguslavskaya, Ivan Klyun, Mikhail Menkov, Ivan Puni, Olga Rozanova, and Lyubov Popova. They announced themselves as the Suprematist group at The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting 0.10.

Commenting on Malevich's famous Black Square (1913-15) art historian Charles Harrison stated that he did not believe "that 'revolutions' in art cause social revolutions or provoke wars. [Rather] the faith in human capacities which impelled those [such as the Suprematists] who entertained ideas of abstract art may have been realistic to this extent: firstly that the form of faith involved may have been consistent with the state of mind (the bravery) required to envisage a progressive social and historical change, and secondly that there may have been practical grounds for believing such a change was worth pursuing". While the "difficulty" of Suprematism made it unsuitable for the political Constructivism agenda, the link between Suprematism and Constructivism was nevertheless pursued by the likes of Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky (both of whom had worked in the Suprematist idiom) who took its basic colors and shapes, and the idea of movement, forward in the name of Constructivist goals.

History usually attributes the birth of Constructivism to two artists, Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich, both of whom had been associated hitherto with the Cubo-Futurist movement (an amalgam of Cubism and Futurism). On a visit to Pablo Picasso's Paris studio in 1913, Tatlin became mesmerized by a series of three-dimensional wooden reliefs. Following Picasso's influence, he produced his own abstract assemblages which he called Corner Counter Reliefs. The reliefs constructed primarily from metal and wood, were "a new kind of object" (somewhere between sculpture and architecture) and were unveiled to the public at the "Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0,10" in Petrograd in 1915-16. At the same exhibition, Malevich revealed his Suprematism paintings which were composed of basic geometric forms and colors that, when placed against a plain white background, appeared to "float" in space. Suprematism was, in the words of its creator, the search for "supremacy of pure feeling of perception in pictorial arts".

Also in 1916, Wassily Kandinsky, one of the earliest pioneers of abstract art, had returned to Moscow (from Germany) where he mixed with some of the key names (Tatlin, Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova and Naum Gabo) in the burgeoning Constructivist movement. Kandinsky supported state funded proletariat arts and education initiatives - such as Proletkult ("proletarian culture"), a country-wide proletariat arts program established by the Bolsheviks in 1917 - but Kandinsky's relationship with Constructivism was uneven and short lived. One of his most vocal critics was Stepanova, who (having served as assistant director of the art and literature section of IZO Narkompros, a government agency charged with the enlightenment of the people through culture) argued that educators should be able to "characterize and express" artistic concepts "in words" and through clear channels of communication. Kandinsky's search for pure spirituality rubbed against these utilitarian goals and, in 1921, he accepted an offer from Walter Gropius to join him at the Bauhaus.

Agitprop

The disjunction between Suprematism and Constructivism can be attributed chiefly to the idea of agitprop (agitational propaganda). The Suprematist's search for the "supremacy of feelling" was overtaken by the idea that domestic art (ergo Constructivism) should explicitly support the interests of the nascent Soviet Union. It was a state backed policy that even warranted its own bureau, The Communist Party's Department of Agitation and Propaganda (established in 1920). The term itself refers to the idea that art and/or popular culture would become politicized and act as a vital tool in the promotion of political ideology. To be fully effective, agitprop had first and foremost to "grab the attention" of its public and, moreover, (if it was to reach its potential) agitprop would need to reach beyond the confines of the museum and art gallery. Historian Kevin Brown makes the point that the Bolsheviks "came into power under the guise of popular support" when this was in fact "far from the truth" and that the regime had "seized power against the will of the majority". To gain the "will of the majority", therefore, the Bolsheviks initiated a '''cultural' bureaucracy for whom culture was only a form of propaganda, and propaganda the highest form of culture".

Brown describes how "Agitprop theatre was used after the October Revolution to indoctrinate the working proletariat". It was a style of theatre that "quickly and easily spread the Bolshevik's political message, as it evoked a powerful emotional reaction from spectators". Indeed, Brown explains how the "accessibility, mobility, and spontaneity of these productions made them perfect for Bolsheviks who, without agitprop theatre, had no way of making contact with the working class". One of the devices employed by agitprop theater troupes was the so-called "Living Newspaper" whereby actors "read newspapers aloud to a large group of people [and to] liven up these events, actors began to perform the news, 'using music, clowns, acrobats, cartoon style, and montage techniques'". But the Bolsheviks had also to spread their dogma beyond its industrial city/centers, and for this purpose, cinema would emerge as a more effective means of agitprop.

Agit Trains

Historian Adelheid Heftberger explains how, in 1919, Anatolii Lunacharskii "The Soviet People's Commissar of Enlightenment", stated that "Education in the wider sense of the word consists in the dissemination of ideas among minds that would otherwise remain a stranger to them. Cinema can accomplish both these things with particular force: it constitutes, on the one hand, a visual clarion for the dissemination of ideas and, on the other hand, if we introduce elements of the refined, the poetic, the pathetic etc., it is capable of touching the emotions and thus becomes an apparatus of agitation". Given the fact that most rural communities had never seen the moving image before, the simple agitki (propaganda films), became the key medium for the dissemination of Bolshevik propaganda. (It would be another five years or so before the Russian Formalist cinema reached, through individuals who had cut their teeth on the production of agitki movies, the artistic and political goals that Lunacharskii had envisioned.)

The "agitation-instructional trains" were initiated as early as 1918. They consisted of 16 to 18 carriages and became the key means by which the Bolsheviks would disseminate their political dogma amongst Russia's rural population, most of whom were illiterate or semi-illiterate peasants, or children. The trains, which also serviced Red Army soldiers fighting in the civil war, distributed printed media (pamphlets, brochures, newspapers etc.) and, as the historian Michael Russell notes, the train carriages were "distinctively and brightly decorated with paintings and slogans [by Constructivist] artists of the standing of [Vladimir] Mayakovsky and El Lissitzky". Agit-Trains were also equipped with newsreel filmmaking facilities and a cinema carriage. The Agit-Train initiative proved so successful it was applied to the waterways where, between 1919-20, the Red Star ( Krasnaia zvesda) steamer cruised the length of the Volga River. It docked at various points where visitors boarded to watch agitki films. It is estimated that during this period, the Red Star presented some 400 screenings, attended by a total audience of around 500,000.

Productivism

Often, movements are launched with the publication of a manifesto, but by the time Aleksei Gan published Konstruktivizm, which coincided with the official formation of the new Soviet Union in 1922, the movement was moving into its Productivism phase. Challenging the pure abstraction of Suprematism, and sculptor Naum Gabo's contention that Constructivism should devote itself solely to the exploration of abstract space and rhythm, Gan introduced his manifesto with the blunt avowal: "WE DECLARE UNCOMPROMING WAR ON ART!" (original casing).

The Institute of Artistic Culture ( INKhUK), which existed between 1920-24, involved artists, graphic designers, painters, architects, scholars, and sculptors who debated the purpose and function of Bolshevik arts and culture. From these debates grew the idea of Productivism. The essence of Productivism was based on the socio-economic principle that societal growth could only be truly measured by that society's levels of productivity. The belief was that this idea could be transferred to the arts once Constructivists abandoned obscure avant-garde experimentation and committed to industrial-like working practices. It was a philosophy backed by the likes of Rodchenko, Stepanova, Tatlin, Malevich, Lissitzky, Popova, and the Stenberg Brothers who engaged with activities ranging through furniture design, ceramics, clothing design, typography, advertising, and theater set design.

In the Productivist spirit, Tatlin turned his talents to designing furniture, worker's clothing and even a fully functioning stove. Others introduced Constructivist design into advertising for workers' co-operatives using bold and spare colorful geometric designs. Rodchenko, Stepanova and Mayakovsky, even went by the name "advertising constructors" and produced print advertisements promoting commodities ranging from cooking oil, through confectionary and bakery items, to beer. For her part, Stepanova ventured into the field of textile design. In 1926 the artist and critic Boris Arvatov published Art and Production which acted as a manual for Productivist art. However, by the end of the decade Productivism had, like all forms of Constructivism, been all-but abolished under a Stalinist regime which threw its support behind the more immediate Socialist Realist art.

Concepts, Styles and Trends

Architecture

Constructivist architecture grew from the radical theories on design as espoused by Tatlin, Lissitzky, and Malevich. Their ideas translated into architectural jargon as "stereometric forms" which described an architectural style purged of all decorative elements and all references to past styles. Architecture historian, William C. Brumfield, explains how the Institute of Artistic Culture ( INKhUK), "attempted to establish a science examining analytically and synthetically the basic elements both for the separate arts and for art as a whole", but that its "first program curriculum, developed by Kandinsky, was found too abstract by many at INKhUK". Despite differences in opinion over the future of Constructivist architecture, there was, nevertheless, a shared "concern for the relation between architecture and social planning [and all sides] insisted on a clearly defined structural mass based on uncluttered geometric forms and drew inspiration from modernism in painting and sculpture".

In what is arguably the most iconic of all Constructivist artworks, the 400 meters high Tatlin Tower prototype (or to give it its full title, Monument to the Third International), unveiled in 1919, offered a utopian vision of post-revolutionary Russian architectural design. The hollow spiralling steel tower housed a series of geometric sculptural forms but was quickly dismissed by members of INKhUK as impractical. However, Tatlin's iconic edifice, in the words of Brumfield, "gave notice of a new movement that glorified the rigorous logic of undecorated form as an extension of material and that intended to participate fully in the shaping of Soviet society". It was not until the mid-'20s, however, that working Constructivist structures came to fruition (in Moscow and other Russian cities) through the efforts of pioneering figures such as Alexander Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg.

Sculpture

There were many overlaps between Constructivist artforms, not least in sculpture and architecture. Discussions on Constructivist sculpture typically begin with Tatlin's Tower (1919) because it amounted to an attack on the "carved" and "cast" academic sculpture which it replaced with a preference for modern industrial materials (steel, glass, plastic and so on). The Constructivist sculpture thus rejected the academic principles of harmony in "mass" and "volume" in favor of constructed geometric forms that embraced the aesthetic quality of the mechanical age.

However, not all Constructivists bought into the functional element of Constructivist art. Some, such as Naum Gabo, rejected Tatlin's design because of its emphasis on function. Gabo's geometric sculptures used Constructivist materials such as glass, plastic, and metal but, in 1920, he and his brother, Antoine Pevsner, wrote and distributed their "Realistic Manifesto" (of Constructivism) in which they asserted that art should function independently of all state interests. They wrote: "The plumb line in hand, eyes as precise as a ruler, in a mind as tense as a compass ... we construct our work as the universe constructs its own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathematician formulates his orbits". Gabo maintained that art (if it was to be timeless) should be about energy, force, and rhythm. In 1920 he produced, Kinetic Composition, in which a motor rotated a steel blade as a demonstration of relations between of space and time. Gabo's sculpture is the first known work of Kinetic Art.

Photomontage

Photomontage has been the medium of choice for producers of propaganda and agitprop. Following in the vein of the Dadaists, the Constructivists favored the photographic image because it communicates with an immediacy and objectivity that can be lost with painting and written text. Indeed, Lissitzky declared that "No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography". By combining images with text, photomontage was seen as a modern, attention-grabbing, technique that was perfectly suited to the goals of Bolshevik agitprop.

Figures such as Rodchenko, Stepanova, Gustav Klutis and the Stenberg Brothers showed their support for formalist cinema by creating posters (and also film prospectuses, advertisements, periodicals and even promotional photocollages and maquettes). Indeed, the film poster became a Constructivist artform in its own right and its greatest exponents were the Stenberg Brothers. As Vladimir Stenberg put it: "Ours are eye-catching posters, designed to shock. We deal with the material in a free manner. . . disregarding actual proportions. . . turning figures upside-down; in short, we employ everything that can make a busy passerby stop in their tracks. The inventive results included a distortion of perspective, elements from Dada photomontage, creative cropping, an exaggerated scale, a sense of movement, and a dynamic use of color and typography, all of which created a revolutionary new art form: the film poster".

Textile Design

Following the Revolution, Russia had become distanced from the major international fashion centers (notably, Paris). Addressing the need for new designs in clothing and other textiles, artists like Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova worked on new designs geared specifically towards mass production. Both worked at the Tsindel ( First State Textile Factory), for who they produced over 150 designs, and both taught textile design at Vkhutemas ( Higher Technical Artistic Studios). In fact, the two women were, as art historian Christina Kiaer notes, "the only Constructivists to see their designs for everyday, utilitarian things actually mass-produced and distributed in the Soviet economy".

Stepanova was perhaps the most influential women in the Constructivist movement (Popova's career was cut short by disease in 1924). She had an oeuvre that encompassed painting, poetry, photography, graphic design, and set design and was the life-partner of Rodchenko. The fashion historian Jacob Charles Wilson writes, "The workers of the new world would live and play in the very best materials and designs: casual jumpsuits and overalls that drew on both traditional peasant clothing and the latest modernist artistic trends of futurism and cubism. Stepanova's designs use dynamic shapes that emphasise the human body in action, with sharp angular forms, printed abstract patterns and contrasting colours: bold reds and blacks. Her clothes would enhance the flexibility and comfort of moving through the streets and the city, in the factory and on to the playing field, while unisex clothing patterns would no longer confine men and women to stifling gender norms".

Constructivism and Cinema

In 1923, Constructivist artists organized themselves into a sub-group called "Left Front of the Arts" under whose name they produced the highly influential avant-garde journal LEF, (1923-25), and then, New LEF (1927-29). The journal defended the avant-garde against the rise of Socialist Realism and the threat of a rebirth of a traditional bourgeois/capitalist art. For the contributors of LEF, the medium of cinema held the greatest potential for defence against easel painting and traditional narratives. Pioneers of the Formalist cinema, some of whom had cut their teeth on the Agit Train films, agitki, were Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Esther Shub, and Dziga Vertov.

A former student of Lyubov Popova, Eisenstein was the most influential of the group. He developed five stages of dialectical montage - metric, rhythmic, tonal, over tonal, intellectual - that combined to bring a revolutionary dynamism to commercial filmmaking. He wrote in his famous treatise on montage, The Film Sense, "the fact [is] that two film pieces of any kind, placed together, inevitably combine into a new concept, a new quality, arising out of a juxtaposition". Battleship Potemkin features what now ranks as one of the most influential sequences in the history of international cinema: the Odesa Steps sequence. The film told the true story (occurring in 1905) of a mutiny against a tyrannical ship's officer. The final straw comes when the men are served with rotten meat at their mealtime. Their revolt spills onto the streets of the port town of Odesa (now Ukraine) where their uprising is supported by the ordinary citizens (comrades) of Odesa. The protesters are then mercilessly mown down by a Cossack army on the famous Odesa Steps. In Eisenstein's model, shot A: thesis, is placed next to shot B: antithesis, which results in C: synthesis. This process, which disobeys all rules of temporal and spatial continuity, demands an intellectual engagement from the viewer and, in theory, the audience is transformed (agitated) from passive to active spectators.

Later Developments - After Constructivism

Constructivism had, following a steady decline, all but ceased in Russia by the early 1930s. The movement had fallen victim of Stalin's hostility to intellectualism and avant-garde art and gave way to the new regime's preference for Socialist Realism. Nevertheless, the style of Constructivism (now divested of its original political purpose) would continue to inspire artists in the West, firstly as a movement called International Constructivism which, initiated by El Lissitzky (who was appointed Russia's Cultural Ambassador to Weimar Germany in 1921), flourished in Germany in the 1920s, and which endured into the 1950s. Its style extended across typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design.

Lissitzky's Proun forms influenced the industrial design of László Moholy-Nagy (who was Course Director at the Bauhaus) and, in the Netherlands, Constructivist principles influenced the De Stijl movement. Constructivism also found a home in England through Naum Gabo who resided, before and during the Second World War, on the Cornwall coast where he joined Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and others as a member of the St. Ives movement. Constructivism crossed the Atlantic, too, with the sculptor George Rickey penning what is often cited as the first comprehensive guide to Constructivism, in 1967.

Constructivism also found a home in Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s with Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica gaining recognition for a series of neo-Constructivist works. These pieces shared many formal similarities with Russian Constructivism, and their work also carried an element of agitprop in that it sort to "activate" their audience with pieces that could be rearranged or even worn performatively, as in Oiticica's Parangolés (1964-79). These were layered nylon, burlap and gauze capes made with colored fabrics containing photography, painting, pebbles, straw, and shells, and even text carrying political and poetic messages. Participants would wear the capes and express themselves through movement and dance.

Useful Resources on Constructivism

The books and articles below constitute a bibliography of the sources used in the writing of this page. These also suggest some accessible resources for further research, especially ones that can be found and purchased via the internet.

Similar Art

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"The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people."

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Constructivism was a groundbreaking movement in art, design, and architecture that began in Russia in 1913, but really rose to prominence after the Russian Revolution of 1917. This revolution was a time of great dissent and change, leading to the dismantling of the Tsarist regime in favor of the Bolsheviks.

Russian Constructivism was considered more of a philosophy than just a style, and reflected a belief in art for social change rather than personal expression. The Russian Constructivists were proponents of functional art and design rather than decorative, expressive art (such as easel painting) that was hung on walls. This echoed the revolutionary mood of the times where the bourgeois culture was being replaced by the revolutionary proletariat movement.

The tools and techniques of the more traditional, figurative painting and art styles were replaced with "constructed" photomontages and strong typography. Russian Constructivism characteristically had minimal color palettes, often just red, black and sometimes yellow. They frequently had diagonal elements with circular and angled type and images. The resulting work was extremely dramatic, containing layered images coupled with powerful type treatments. This work was exciting, often jolting, and even shocking, which was in line with their goal to change society. This movement was a dramatic shift from previous, more conventional movements and philosophies of art.

Although originally intended for political messages, the Constructivist style seeped into product advertisements and posters of all kinds, as well as book covers and their interiors. Three of the most influential designers of the Russian Constructivist period are Alexander Rodchenko, the Stenberg Brothers, and to some extent, El Lissitzky, a Futurist who influenced the Constructivist movement. Here is a little background and a sampling of their work. Most of the work speaks for itself, but I have provided explanations for those that call for it.

Alexander (Aleksandr) Rodchenko (1891-1956)

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This Russian designer, photographer, painter and sculptor was considered one of the founders of Russian Constructivist movement. In fact, the term "constructivist" was originally coined by the artist Kasmir Malevich in reference to the work of Rodchenko. Although his original focus was painting, he then went on to play around with photography, typography, and imagery, combining them into what was then referred to as montage or photomontage. He eschewed easel painting for 'industrial art' as he called it - that is, art with a social purpose and message for the masses. Although much of his earlier work was for political purposes and to change the world, he went on to apply this artistic movement to ads for ordinary objects such as beer, pacifiers, cookies, watches, and other consumer products.

In March 1923, Rodchenko published an article in which he said, "there is now a new illustrative method: montage of printed and photographic materials focused on a certain subject. Providing ample material of great demonstrative value and conviction, it dispenses with illustration by drawing."

El Lissitzky (Lazar Markovich Lissitzky) 1890-1941

This Russian-born painter, designer, and typographer is associated with both the Suprematist and the Constructivist movements. He studied engineering and architecture in addition to art, giving him a very linear, logical approach to all that he did. His work, especially that which incorporated the Suprematist philosophy, was highly abstracted with minimal color, geometric shapes, and in some cases, deep symbolism. As with all Constructivists, he believed art should be used as an agent of change.

El Lissitzky designed many books, posters, exhibitions, and other kinds of Soviet propaganda. Most of his work was politically oriented, as was most of the work produced in that era. These quotes by El Lissitzky express two of his design philosophies: "Typographical design should perform optically what the speaker creates through voice and gesture of his thoughts," as well as "Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography." His thoughtful, somewhat cerebral work influenced modern art, including the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements.

The Stenberg Brothers (Georgii 1900-1933 and Vladimir 1899-1982)

These Soviet brothers were artists, sculptors, and designers. They always worked in collaboration, and designed over 300 movie posters (which is what they are most known for) in the decade before Georgii's untimely death from a motorcycle accident in 1933.

The new Bolshevik government was completely supportive of the cinema industry, especially it's power to propagandize and spread their new message aimed at the masses. At that time, over 60% of the population was illiterate, so the Constructivist's work with its strong, jarring images and powerful design was able to catch their eye, and helped to spread this new ideology.

The Stenberg's primary technique was montage. Their posters were designed to be eye-catching and even shocking. "We deal with the material in a free matter...disregarding actual proportions...turning figures upside down; in short, we employ everything that can make busy passerbys stop in their tracks." Their work rejected traditional styles in favor of other ways to convey the motion, dynamism, and rhythm that characterize the work of 1920s. They frequently used unconventional viewing angles, radical foreshortening, and unsettling close-ups. Their posters even hold up today, and can appear as striking as they did in their day. In fact, ITC released two fonts in 2000 inspired by the Brothers' work, entitled ITC Stenberg.

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Contemporary posters in the Russian Constructivist style:

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Russian Constructivism and Graphic Design | CreativePro Network

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Constructivism was a groundbreaking movement in art, design, and architecture that began in Russia in 1913, but really rose to prominence after the Russian Revolution of 1917. This revolution was a time of great dissent and change, leading to the dismantling of the Tsarist regime in favor of the Bolsheviks.

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Written by Craig Berry
Designer & Writer

In the past few years I have noticed a rise in the documentation and appreciation of Russian and Eastern-European art and design, with more galleries and museums exhibiting newly un-earthered collections of prints, posters, sketches and other ephemera. We are beginning to see more and more of these works in big institutions showcasing this iconic movement of the early 20th century. This write-up aims to elaborate on the theme of constructivist art and design via its history and some exhibitions I visited that address the movement.

The constructivist movement was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia in the 1910's at a time when the revolution of 1917 had been consolidated and the new Soviet government was building a new communist society. Constructivism took ideas from existing movements like Suprematism, Cubism, Futurism and Dada, but instead of using traditional artistic composition to create work and objects they replaced this with construction, hence the name constructivism. This was not limited to design however but also art, sculpture, architecture, fashion and theatrical design. At this time in the world, developments in maths and science by the likes of Einstein shook up the art world by showing how space and time worked; with this knowledge artists were creating less traditional and real scenarios in art and in turn becoming more avant-garde, abstract and futuristic in their approach and aesthetic.

Two exhibitions I visited this year: 'Constructing the New Man' at the Stedelijk (Amsterdam) in February and 'Imagine Moscow' at the new Design Museum (London) in April, both focus on Russian art and design and constructivism but in different ways.

Firstly, The Stedelijk where the exhibition, 'Constructing the New Man', commemorated the Russian Revolution centenary through a vast presentation featuring posters, printed matter, films and art from the Stedelijk collection; a large space was dedicated to the exhibition exploring the art and design of these posters and films as propaganda. Firstly the poster, as a medium posters were (still are) an easy and effective medium for artists to convey their messages and to build and strengthen the socialist society; artists chose various production methods such as satirical cartoons, photographic editing techniques and collaging to produce their work. The collage style was effective, allowing for photo montage and early graphic design in terms of composition and use of type.

Constructing the New Man Artworks

As well as these bigger posters there were a few tables showing smaller, flyer-sized prints using these collage and photo montage methods. Despite being all totally different in their method and made by different artists and designers almost all of them have a consistent style, that being, bold red and black colour, black and white photography/photo-montage and collages of photo on photo, photo on type and type on type. It all has an early modernist feel with its use of sans-serif (and Cyrillic) type, straight, vertical/horizontal lines and diagonal angles.

Constructivist Posters & Flyers

These are ones that stood out for me for their general composition and they felt the most 'constructivist', they feel inherently bold and its clear that they are conveying a strong message, obviously I can't understand it but I don't think you need to be able to read it to see that it is making a statement. The use of arrows here is a strong shape especially in this propaganda, it strengthens the idea of moving forward as a nation and/or a movement.

Some of the original posters had been especially enlarged for the exhibition allowing for maximum visual impact, I thought that enlarging this poster below was a great decision as it only emphasised the already loud and bold image. Repeating the same word in concentric circles increases the impact and also the use of colour here which is a lot more expressive than other prints and posters; it is titled 'Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas', which combined with the vibrancy of the colours gives an overall positive and uplifting feeling.

Dziga Vertov: Enthousiasm: Symphony of the Donbas - 1931

Dziga Vertov: Enthousiasm: Symphony of the Donbas - 1931 (Enlarged)

The use of blocky cyrillic letters reminds me a lot of one of the most well known Russian constructivist images by Aleksandr Rodchenko, this one of a woman yelling 'КНИГИ/BOOKS'. They are both optimistic and have this idea of shouting a message to the audience, something that also appears in further constructivist imagery.

Stolichnaya Vodka Adverts

These kinds of constructivist posters have somewhat become the image or a stereotype of Russian art and design in general and have been pastiched multiple times for advertising as well as serving as visual references for other artists. The example below for Stolichnaya vodka uses the constructivist style to inform the viewer that the vodka is quintessentially Russian.

The style is also popular in design as a method to look bold and important, yelling the message to the viewer in a propaganda style but often it can look unnecessarily forced, especially when it is for something such as tea, beer or a classical music event.

Another is this of the Franz Ferdinand album 'You Can Have It So Much Better' which is basically the same as the Rodchenko image above but replaces the word 'BOOKS' for the band name. Sure, it is referencing a great design movement but one that was of its time and for its reasons, here it is just so obviously a poor copy, I don't think the music is inherently constructivist myself, but that's up to you to decide.

The street-artist Shepard Fairey also regularly uses a constructivist style to produce his artworks but instead of trying to look Russian or look like an original constructivist image he is using the form and treatment to create a propaganda feeling in his work, when using the statements he uses it seems to work and it feels cohesive. The use of red and black also creates an aggressive and powerful tone, again suiting the statements and messages inside.

Although, despite being somewhat more original in his work, this image below by Fairey was made around the time of the Obama election campaign and you can't deny it looks incredibly similar to Rodchenko's orginal work.

After the exhibition I was actively looking for similar things and when I went to London for a long weekend I saw that the Design Museum had an exhibition on Russian architecture, design and propaganda. It was also an excuse to visit the newly built Design Museum.

The exhibiti0n, 'Imagine Moscow', was in the basement of the museum which was a pretty awkward space and also it wasn't allowed to take photographs so I have to try remember it as best as possible without images to help, although I did take notes and a few sneaky photographs as well as find a bunch online.

The space was divided into 7 different sections with 6 of these based on architecture designs and proposals which were never realised and the 7th based around Lenin's Mausoleum which was realised, built at Moscow's Red Square. The title of the exhibition is clever in that it alludes to what the content is going to be about, it allows you to imagine what Moscow could've been like with these immense buildings below.

The feeling of the exhibition was that of a somewhat dystopian place with these grand and adventurous architectural sketches, models and photographs of these unrealised buildings. Each of the proposed buildings was based around social purpose such as education, housing, health etc.

IvanLeonidov: Lenin Institute - 1927

IvanLeonidov's Lenin Institute - an education space and library containing 15 million books which was to become the 'collective knowledge centre of the USSR'. Lenin set out to fight illiteracy in the USSR by educating the new Soviet man and woman. The vast sphere in this sketch below would have been an auditorium for educational lectures with the tower being the library split over five reading rooms. As well as this, it was proposed that the building would also have contained science lecture theatres, a planetarium and a radio station to broadcast events to the world.

El Lissitzky's Cloud Iron - a horizontal skyscraper to reduce overcrowding. His concept was a network of horizontal blocks in Moscow, placed on top of vertical columns. The horizontal sections would have been offices and apartments which would be connected to transport stations via the vertical upright columns. As well as a practical justification, Lissitzky wanted to give Moscow a new skyline to replace its old-fashioned past.

Boris Iofan's Palace of the Soviets - a huge monument which would have been the tallest building in the world; here a proposed 100 metre statue of Lenin would have made the overall building around 516 metres. An incredible and dramatic expression of Soviet power. The building work was begun but stopped during WW2 despite already demolishing the city's largest church already. Instead its foundations were converted into an open air pool. This would've been an incredible building and homage to Lenin and if it was realised, to give some scale, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro would be tiny in comparison at 38 metres tall compared to the 100 metres of Lenin.

The exhibition space, as I mentioned earlier, was awkwardly laid out and somewhat claustrophobic in the basement but upon reflecting on this, the layout was supposed to confuse and entrap you behind columns and walls, there is no clear route. The curator of the exhibition claims the layout aims to create a 'surprising' experience for the visitor that is not restricted to a historical timeline:

"The spiral shape requires active movement and generates surprising views between different exhibits. The exhibition's curation revolves around the 'phantoms' without any hierarchy or chronology, which work both as a series and as autonomous parts."

As well as the architectural sketches, photographs and models were quintessential constructivist artworks by El Lissitzky, he is almost seen as the constructivist artist with his unique style of simple geometric shapes and abstract forms with basic colour. He was able to challenge conventions within art - combining architecture and flat shapes. His work covered art, graphic design, typography, photography and architecture with the somewhat modernist ideals it deeply influenced later modern art such as early De Stijl artists and the Bauhaus.

His 'Proun' series he said existed at "the station where one changes from painting to architecture." These paintings combined basic forms and shifting axes-culminating in multiple perspectives and intriguing lines. These works may be considered fundamental to the development of modern abstract imagery, and a great influence on acutely industrial modern architecture.

Lissitzky's influence in graphic design cannot be overstated. He was one of the first artists to use a restricted and pared-down palette of primary colors, black and white, text, and basic forms to tell stories and inform as well as to make very powerful political statements. Arguably his most famous piece, 'Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge' reguarly appears in graphic design history lectures. Here Lissitzky has used his somewhat signature and easily recognisable combination of red, white and black, which reinforces the message indicated by the work's title. Colours and shapes take on directly symbolic significance and semiotics. The sharp red wedge clearly symbolises the Red Army revolutionaries that were penetrating the cicular defences of the anti-communist White Army.

I think that this image sums up the constructivist art and design movement whole-heartedly because it fits this definition:

"The seed of Constructivism was a desire to express the experience of modern life - its dynamism, its new and disorientating qualities of space and time. But also crucial was the desire to develop a new form of art more appropriate to the democratic and modernizing goals of the Russian Revolution. Constructivists were to be constructors of a new society - cultural workers on par with scientists in their search for solutions to modern problems."

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Written by Craig Berry Designer & Writer In the past few years I have noticed a rise in the documentation and appreciation of Russian and Eastern-European art and design, with more galleries and museums exhibiting newly un-earthered collections of prints, posters, sketches and other ephemera.

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You'll see it in the sans serif sign outside a hipster coffee shop, or in the monochrome patterned print of an expensive wallpaper. It looks curiously fresh. But lying behind much of what feels like breezy, urban, 21st century design is, in fact, the impact of a momentous period in history - that of a turbulent revolution.

Ending centuries of repressive Tsarist rule and replacing it, eventually, with the first Communist state, the 1917 Russian Revolution transformed politics, economics and, of course, culture - as can be seen in the RA's current exhibition, Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932. Debate set in as ideas of a new "people's" art started to take shape. Modern design had begun to emerge throughout Europe and the United States, stimulating new creative energies and novel ways of making art, and in the Soviet Union, a period of profound creativity came with those early years of revolution.

Progressive young artists began to propagandise revolutionary virtues in mass art forms like books, magazines, textiles and posters. Agitational art and design movements, with names like Constructivists and Productivists, came up with alternative design languages and methods that changed accepted practices of graphic and product design, typography and architecture for generations to follow. A state-funded cultural education organisation set up in the wake of the Revolution, the Proletkult, rejected musty, traditional conventions and promoted a new, practical art that was responsive to the needs of people in the street. Until it was disbanded at Lenin's behest, it provided a spring of forward-looking Communist ideals - chiefly that art must serve the needs of party and state for the good of all.

Today's graphic designers, knowingly or not, owe a debt to the intrepid designers who were inspired, embattled and even persecuted by this momentous revolution. Many designers now employ these vintage mannerisms without any concept of the struggles that brought them or why they were suppressed for decades. Others understand that these -isms represent leaps forward and backward in modern culture. Visual language, like any other, is an amalgam of past and present, and the Russian Revolution's contribution is endemic to the way a wide swath of typography, imagery and composition is made - a way that would not have existed without the crucible of revolution.

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Five graphic design ideas from the Russian Revolution | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts

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Soviet designers gave us dynamic geometry, bold typography and minimalist colour that feels right at home in 2017. Designer and author Steve Heller shares five key ideas you need to know.

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Russian Constructivism was an artistic movement that triumphed in Russia in the 1920s. The paintings, graphic design, photography, and cinema of the time all show evidence of its influence, but it was in architecture that it found its most concrete and revolutionary application.

The movement rose out of the rejection of the decorative and ornamental excesses that were seen as belonging to bourgeois art. While Neoclassicism and Art Nouveau prevailed in the rest of Europe, the Russians were going to create a type of art based on simplicity, pure lines, and geometric shapes, that was inspired by Cubism and Futurism.

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Art that served the revolution

Following the success of the Russian Revolution, Constructivism became its official art style and the manifestation of the aesthetics of the new Socialist society. Constructivists saw the style as a tool for the revolution that could, and should, contribute to the shaping of a new social order and the dissemination of Socialist ideology. Artists saw their work from a utilitarian and functional perspective, in which the aesthetics were always there to serve the purpose of the art, and they wanted to change the world with their work.

The design style was influenced by the Industrial Revolution that the Soviet Union experienced after the Russian Revolution. We can see this in Tatlin's Tower, designed by Vladimir Tatlin, one of the main examples of Constructivism and which was never built. It combined a machine aesthetic with dynamic components that celebrated technology, such as reflectors and projection screens.

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At the end of the 1920s, the Communist Party began favouring the doctrines of Socialist Realism, which would reign over Soviet art for decades. Its influence, which inspired the Bauhaus and major architects, can still be seen today.

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Constructivist architecture and the new Socialist city

The use of Constructivist principles in architecture was their most concrete and revolutionary application. The Socialist way of life meant changes to daily life and work and Constructivists took on the job of designing a new city for this new society. They focused their attention on creating new infrastructure that were required for community services, applying the criteria of functionality.

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For this reason they would use "poor" materials (e.g. concrete, glass, and metal) and a style based on simplicity, pure lines, and geometric shapes. It was all about providing simple and cheap answers to new urban problems, and in the process, occasionally creating new architectural typologies. This is how workers' clubs, leisure centres, and group homes came to exist. Centres for communication, garages, factories, and schools were some of the other highlights of this movement. All of them were utilitarian buildings that served the people.

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Some of the best examples that still exist today include the House Hive and the Rusakov Workers' Club (Melnikov, 1929); the Zuev Workers' Club (Golosov, 1929); the Mosselprom apartment building (Strukov, 1917); the Intourist garage (Melnikov, 1933); the Shábolovka Communications Tower (Shujov, 1922); the Communal House of the Textile Institute (Nikolaiev, 1930), the Communal House for the Narkomfin (Ginzburg and Milinis, 1930). And let's not forget the more than 140 Constructivist structures that have been preserved in the city of Yekaterinburg as well as the other buildings constructed throughout the territory of the former USSR.

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After a political fall from grace in the mid-1930s, some of the buildings had to hide their avant-garde structures with ornamental elements. This was called "enriched Constructivism", contrasting with the movement's bare beginnings.

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Russian Constructivism in graphic design

Pure geometric forms, linearity, symmetry, repetition, simple, sans-serif fonts, the dominance of red and black, photomontage. Using these elements, Constructivists would create a graphic design style that rejected all artifice and that we still associate with post-revolution Russia today. Its purposes included informing a population of mostly illiterate people about the politics of the new government. That was the reason for one of the its main characteristics: font manipulation in order to give each part of the text the characteristics (e.g. a shape or colour) that reflected its importance within the message.

The main figures behind it were Aleksandr Rodchenko, his wife Varvara Stepanova, El Lissitzky, and the Stenberg brothers. The advertising agency founded by Rodchenko and the poet Mayakovski released more than 150 designs and ads between 1923 and 1925.

How far did Constructivism get? Photography and cinema

Rodchenko was also a pioneer of photographic Constructivism, which sought to free the photographer from the conventions of the time by showing common objects from unexpected angles, to the extent that they were difficult to recognise, as well as producing contrasts with light.

Closely linked to photography, cinema also became a field of experimentation for Constructivists. Alongside the intertitles created for some films by artists like Rodchenko, the montage style of Sergei Einseistein and Dziga Vertov are also considered Constructivist. In a similar way to Rodchenko's photography, Vertov's Kinoks sought to embody "a deeper truth which could not be seen with the naked eye".

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Russian constructivism: what is it? | Connections by Finsa

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Russian Constructivism was an artistic movement that triumphed in Russia in the 1920s. The paintings, graphic design, photography, and cinema of the time all show evidence of its influence, but it was in architecture that it found its most concrete and revolutionary application.

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Constructivism in Graphic Design Overview

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A movement with origins in Russia, Constructivism was primarily an art and architectural movement. It rejected the idea of art for arts' sake and the traditional bourgeois class of society to which previous art had been catered. Instead it favored art as a practise directed towards social change or that would serve a social purpose. Developing after World War I, the movement sought to push people to rebuild society in a Utopian model rather than the one that had led to the war.

The term construction art was first coined by Kasmir Malevich in reference to the work of Aleksander Rodchenko. Graphic Design in the constructivism movement ranged from the production of product packaging to logos, posters, book covers and advertisements. Rodchenko's graphic design works became an inspiration to many people in the western world including Jan Tschichold and the design motif of the constructivists is still borrowed, and stolen, from in much of graphic design today.

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History of Graphic Design, Graphic Designers, Art and Design Movements, Motion Graphics, Typography, Color, Design, graphic, Design, Reference, Referenced, A collection of information intended to be used as a primer and a reference tool in relation to the history of graphic design

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History of Graphic Design- Constructivism

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Alexander Rodchenko is perhaps the most important avant-garde artist to have put his art in the service of political revolution. In this regard, his career is a model of the clash between modern art and radical politics. He emerged as a fairly conventional painter, but his encounters with Russian Futurists propelled him to become an influential founder of the Constructivist movement. And his commitment to the Russian Revolution subsequently encouraged him to abandon first painting and then fine art in its entirety, and to instead put his skills in the service of industry and the state, designing everything from advertisements to book covers. His life's work was a ceaseless experiment with an extraordinary array of media, from painting and sculpture to graphic design and photography. Later in his career, however, the increasingly repressive policies targeted against modern artists in Russia led him to return to painting.

Biography of Alexander Rodchenko

Childhood

Alexander Rodchenko was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a working class family. His father, Mikhail Rodchenko, was a theater props manager and his mother, Olga, a washerwoman. The family's social status did not provide much opportunity for the artistic education of talented Alexander. It is still unclear what training (if any) Rodchenko might have acquired as a child. The family moved to the city of Kazan in 1905. Two years later, Mikhail passed away, but they were able to allocate some of the family's scarce funds for Alexander's education.

Early Training

Rodchenko enrolled in the Kazan School of Art, where he studied from 1910 to 1914 under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev. The young artist quickly absorbed the basic principles of the academic training, earning high praise from his instructors. In 1914, he met Varvara Stepanova, a fellow student. They became life-long partners and artistic collaborators.

Kazan proved to be too small and stifling for Rodchenko's emerging vision. He and Stepanova journeyed to Moscow in 1915 to acquire more meaningful exposure to the nascent Russian modernism, permanently settling there in 1916. Rodchenko attended the Stroganov Institute, where he studied drawing, painting, and art history.

In Moscow, Rodchenko was influenced by the key figures of the Russian avant-garde movement, namely Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich. He executed his first abstract drawing, reminiscent of Malevich's Suprematist compositions, in 1915. But it was not only the avant-garde artistic milieu that influenced him. Through his acquaintances with liberal thinkers such as the Futurists David Burliuk and Vasily Kamensky, Rodchenko found himself in the heart of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

Rodchenko's involvement with the Bolshevik cause was both ideological and aesthetic. As a working class young man, he witnessed firsthand the social injustice of Tsarist Russia. Rodchenko deeply believed in the power of art as a driving force of social transformation, as is detailed in many of his letters and diaries, which were only recently translated into English. Rodchenko embraced the emerging aesthetics of Russian Constructivism, becoming a leading member of the group.

Rodchenko's early years demonstrated his artistic talent and quest for innovation. From 1917 to 1918, he was mainly experimenting with flat geometric compositions. Then, in 1919, he created an entirely abstract series of Black on Black paintings, which might be read as a response to the spiritualism of Malevich's Black Square (1915). While Malevich's work seemed to herald the end of painting, it also touted a spiritualism that Rodchenko rejected. The Black on Black paintings, similarly reductive, though not as extreme as the Black Square, emphasized instead the material qualities of picture-making.

In the early years of the Soviet Republic, Rodchenko, alongside his friend and colleague Wassily Kandinsky, was actively engaged in the government reform of art collections and education. In 1917, he became secretary of the Professional Union of Artist-Painters, joining the Izo (Otdel Izobrazitel'nykh Iskusstv or the Section of Visual Arts), as one of the presiding officials the following year.

In 1920, he was appointed the Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund, a newly created agency in charge of the immense art collections transferred by the Bolsheviks from the palaces of the rich into the public domain. During his tenure, Rodchenko acquired 1,926 works of modern and contemporary art by 415 artists and established 30 public museums in Russian provinces.

Mature Period

While organizing the provincial museums, Rodchenko trained artists to serve the Communist state at the Higher Technical Artistic Studios. He taught the same principles that shaped his own artistic discourse; he rejected illusory representation as an outdated form hindered by the capitalist visual agenda, denounced painting as a domineering visual genre, preferring design, which challenged the notion of a work of art as a unique commodity, and, even more radically, promoted the idea of an artist as an engineer, a key creative force at the service of the masses.

In 1921, Rodchenko joined the Productivist movement, a group of artists devoted to the idea of incorporating artistic forms into the daily lives of common people. As a member of the group, Rodchenko designed notable utilitarian objects, including furniture, various household items, and textile patterns. More importantly, he became involved in bringing Constructivist forms into the mass visual propaganda of the Bolsheviks. His posters, such as Books (1924), became an icon of the early Soviet state and its artistic fervor. These works are still considered a pinnacle of modern graphic design today.

The ideas of Wassily Kandinsky may have been an important influence on Rodchenko in the early Soviet years, since the two were closely associated. But while Kandinsky was interested in the expressive possibilities of art, Rodchenko was increasingly interested in its potential as a laboratory for design and construction. This difference is reflected in his interest in line as an elemental component of painting. However, his final statements in painting returned to the issue of color; in 1921, he exhibited the groundbreaking triptych Pure Red Color, Pure Yellow Color, Pure Blue Color (1921) comprised of purely monochrome panels of those colors.

In 1921, Rodchenko took a decisive, although temporary, break from painting. Instead, he concentrated on creating three-dimensional models of design objects, architectural sketches, and photography. He also created sets for film and theatre and designed furniture and clothes. From 1923 to 1925, he collaborated with the great avant-garde poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, illustrating some of his books and magazines for progressive Soviet writers such as LEF and NOVYI LEF.

It was through photography that Rodchenko enjoyed the most success in the 1920s. Employed as a correspondent for a number of Soviet newspapers and magazines, his photographs were exhibited all over the world. He was universally praised for his avant-garde compositions and experimental approach to focus and contrast in his photographs.

Late Years and Death

By the middle of the 1930s, Rodchenko fell out of favor with the Communist Party. The regime's visual ideology was completely transformed when Joseph Stalin came to power. The free-spirited avant-garde aesthetic was now actively suppressed by the state. Rodchenko and his wife were lucky not to perish in Stalin's Great Purges that swept through the Soviet Union and exterminated many individuals who came to prominence at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution. With Social Realism becoming the official art of the U.S.S.R., Rodchenko's paintings and designs were openly condemned by the authorities for so-called "formalism."

As such, Rodchenko turned to photojournalism. His photographic images epitomized the era of High Stalinism by depicting lavish parades, immense industrial undertakings, and the decisive transformation of agriculture. Naturally, Rodchenko was explicitly forbidden to capture the horrendous human toll of this sweeping modernization. In the 1940s, he returned to painting, executing a number of powerful abstract expressionist compositions. These works, however, were never to be seen by his contemporaries, for they openly contradicted the officially sanctioned aesthetics. He continued his work as a photographer throughout the Stalin years, until his death in 1956.

The Legacy of Alexander Rodchenko

As a key figure of the Russian modernist movement, the art of Alexander Rodchenko helped redefine three key visual genres of modernism: painting, photography, and graphic design. In his paintings, the artist further explored and expanded the essential vocabulary of an abstract composition. His series of purely abstract proto-monochrome paintings were influential to artists such as Ad Reinhardt and the Minimalists of the 1960s. In the field of photography, he established unprecedented compositional paradigms, which in many ways still define the entire notion of modern photographic art. Rodchenko's involvement with the Bolshevik cause further propelled the appreciation of his art in the leftist circles of the American avant-garde.

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Rodchenko in his committment to the Russian Revolution put his skills into industry and the state, creating innovative designs and photographs.

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The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world. Vladimir Tatlin was crucially influenced by Pablo Picasso's cubist constructions ( Construction 1914) which he saw in Picasso's studio in Paris in 1913. These were three-dimensional still lifes made of scrap materials. Tatlin began to make his own but they were completely abstract and made of industrial materials.

By 1921 Russian artists who followed Tatlin's ideas were calling themselves constructivists and in 1923 a manifesto was published in their magazine Lef:

The material formation of the object is to be substituted for its aesthetic combination. The object is to be treated as a whole and thus will be of no discernible 'style' but simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like. Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials.

Constructivism was suppressed in Russia in the 1920s but was brought to the West by Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner and has been a major influence on modern sculpture.

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The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world. Vladimir Tatlin was crucially influenced by Pablo Picasso's cubist constructions ( Construction 1914) which he saw in Picasso's studio in Paris in 1913. These were three-dimensional still lifes made of scrap materials.

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Russian Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art period to flourish in Russia in the 20th-century. Looking back in 1924, the painter wrote: " We have drawn two conclusions from Cubism, one is Suprematism, the other Constructivism..." Like Suprematism , Russian Constructivism was formed in 1914, before the October Revolution in 1917 and the most important figure, which most associate to stand as its founder, was Vladimir Tatlin. Focused on the careful technical analysis of modern materials, and the refusal of the idea that art should be produced for the art's sake but as a practice for social purposes, Constructivism borrowed the ideas of the above-mentioned Cubism, but also Futurism and its ideas rooted in the celebration of the modern man and the fast and furious machines. Constructivism art also relied heavily on the criticism and the denial of the spirituality that Suprematism and its leading figure Malevich promoted.

The sometimes violent Constructivist attacks on the idea of the divine, as well as Malevich's replay and the common goal of the two periods that saw creative production belonging to society at large, form one of the richest documents of the modern 20th-century arts. Let us now take a closer look into one of the most "rational" and sometimes even referred to as a "dark period" in history and reflect upon some of the key ideas of the period, the style of the produced artworks, and its legacy.

Left: Gustav Klutsis - Workers, Everyone must vote in the Election of Soviets! Image via arthistoryarchive.com / Right: Russian Propaganda Poster.Image via posterwire.com

The Beginnings of the Russian Constructivism

Vladimir Tatlin is often acknowledged as the father of Constructivism. This Ukrainian artist entered the Moscow avant-garde through his traditional training that was pushed, or better to say, supplemented towards a revolutionary way of thinking by a visit to Paris and a meeting with the celebrated Pablo Picasso . In Paris, Tatlin was confronted by the experimentations taking form in Cubism , along with the three-dimensional constructions and a series of Picasso's still lifes made of scrap materials. Tatlin's admiration for their unconventional modulation, which were composed in such a way that they could have been easily described as ' constructed' challenged Tatlin to explore the new approach in his own production. From 1914 to the mid-1920s, Tatlin, along with his Constructivist colleagues created art and design that furiously emphasized materials, volume, revolution, and construction. Embracing the industrial materials, such as wood, glass, and metal, Russian constructivism shifted towards industrial design, and its authors became engineers of the everyday form.

The promotion of rational thought, social and visual interests based on design and proportion rather than sensual appeal attacked the traditional production. The precise technical analysis of modern-day materials by the Constructivist authors was done with the hope that this investigation would eventually generate ideas that could be used in mass production, serving the ends of a modern, Communist society.

Vladimir Tatlin - Model for the Monument to the Third International.Image via macaulayculkin.tumbrl.com

Constructivism Art and The Revolution

What stood at the root of the period was a desire to express the experience of modern life. Similarly to Italian Futurism, the focus was on the demonstration of dynamism and creativity was seen as a tool for re-invention. Developing after World War I, Russian constructivism pushed towards the production that would serve social change and inspire people to rebuild the society in a Utopian model. The philosophy of using "real materials in real space" the authors used as a tool that was much in line with the Communist principles of the new Russian regime. The art in service of the revolution needed to be bold and stripped off any emotions. This way of thinking different greatly from the standpoint of the Suprematism and the way that the two Avant-garde movements saw art is best described by the following quote taken from the book An Art of Our Own - The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art by Roger Lipsey touching upon the testimony of Nikolai Punin implying an underlining solidarity between the two points of view concerning the already mentioned idea of the common goal for the creative production in service of the people.

"[Malevich and Tatlin] shared a peculiar destiny. When it all began, I don't know, but as far as I remember they were always dividing the world between them: the earth, the heavens, and interplanetary spaces, establishing their own sphere of influence at every point. Usually, Tatlin would assign himself the earth and would try to shove Malevich off into the heavens because of his non-objectivity. Malevich who did not reject the planets, would not surrender the earth since he considered it, justifiably, to be also a planet and could also be non-objective".

Left: Alexander Rodchenko - Krisis, Photomontage / Right: Alexander Rodchenko - Painting. Images via pinterest.com

Important Constructivist Artists and Artworks

It was not until Tatlin exhibited his model for The Monument for the Third International (1919-1920) that Constructivism was considered truly born. Commonly known as Tatlin' Tower, the work was never fully realized. Planned to act as a functional conference space and a propaganda center for the Communist Third International, its steel spiral frame was meant to stand at 1,300 feet, making it even taller than the Eiffel Tower. Tatlin focused on using essential materials for modern construction such as glass and steel and the geometrically shaped units embodied the dynamism of modernity. The tower was commissioned and received considerable prominence by the Bolshevik regime, but since it was never built it continues to stand as an emblem of the failed utopian aspirations.

The geometrical non-objective art , the use of the powerful contrast of the black and red color, along with strong typography symbolizes the Constructivism art style that was not only implemented for the production in the traditional modes of high art, but due to the need for mass fabrication artists were influenced to explore the decorative and applied arts. Some of the most important artists of this period were and Ilya Chashnik that dominated in the production of featuring abstract planar forms, along with the repeated abstract patterns implemented in textile design work. El Lissitzky and were influential figures in , propaganda poster creation , and , which made use of bold lettering, stark planes of color and diagonal elements. The tradition of painting was officially declared dead and considered only to stand as design work for future constructions. Yet, Rodchenko produced the only influential series of paintings. His Black on Black series was meant to represent the ultimate end of spirituality and representation and were a direct confrontation to Malevich's White on White paintings. The black series announced that " Representation is finished; it is time to construct". Alongside Rodchenko, Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Vesnin and Varvara Stepanova also declared this art form as dead at the group exhibition 5 x 5 = 25.

Left: Shepard Fairey - Honest Gil Fulbright SOLD / Right: Shepard Fairey - Barack Obama. Images via wikipedia.org

The Legacy of The Movement

All disciplines of art, including music, film, poetry, especially architecture and theater were touched and transformed during this period that called for complete construction and re-invention of the world, destroying everything before and building the new form from ground zero. As it came to a sudden end in the mid-1920s, due to the growing hostility of the Bolshevik regime to revolutionary art, the ideas and the style of the geometrical non-objective works continued to inspire painters from the West. The International Constructivism flourished in Germany in the 1920s and lasted until the 1950s. A number of Constructivism artist were lecturers at the Bauhaus school, and the design works implemented for the production of propaganda posters, influenced the De Stijl style, along with major graphic and advertising artists today. The 'Tool of Progress' manifesto was released by the Dusseldorf Congress of International Productive Artists, with Hans Richteer, Theo van Doesburg of the Dutch movement , claiming the constructivism art as a symbol of the modern era. The International movements influenced by the Russian avant-garde movement expended on the idea of art as an object and used new materials to highlight advances in technology and industry.

Editors' Tip: The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917- 1946

Following World War I, a new artistic-social avant-garde emerged and Europe embraced the need for change. Through close readings of the works of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and László Moholy-Nagy whose careers covered a broad range of artistic practices and political situations, the author Victor Margolin examines the way these three artists negotiated the changing relations between their social ideals and the political realities they confronted. The Struggle for Utopia: Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917- 1946, offers a great insight into the understanding of the avant-garde period, and the social, political and economic difficulties the artists faced throughout their careers. Beautifully illustrated and covering a range of artistic disciplines if the revolutionary understanding of art is what you adore, then this book is a must-have.
All images used for illustrative purposes only. Featured image: Alexander Rodchenko - Books, 1924. Image via analogue76.com

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Russian Constructivism - The True Vanguard Art Movement | Widewalls

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Russian Constructivism was the last and most influential modern art period to flourish in Russia in the 20th-century. Looking back in 1924, the painter wrote: " We have drawn two conclusions from Cubism, one is Suprematism, the other Constructivism..."