Rodchenko, Alexander

Rodchenko, Alexander (1891–1956). Russian painter, sculptor, industrial designer, and photographer, one of the leading Constructivists. His output was prolific and his artistic evolution was rapid, as he moved from Impressionistic pictures in 1913 to pure abstracts, made with a ruler and compass, in 1916. He was influenced by Malevich's Suprematism, his Black on Black (1918, MoMA, New York) being a response to Malevich's White on White paintings. Rodchenko, however, was without Malevich's mystical leanings, and he coined the term ‘Non-objective’ to describe his own more scientific outlook. In 1917 he began making three-dimensional constructions under the influence of Tatlin, and some of these developed into graceful hanging sculptures. Like Tatlin and other Constructivists, however, Rodchenko came to reject pure art as a parasitic activity, and after 1922 he devoted his energies to industrial design, typography, film and stage design, propaganda posters, and photography. It was perhaps in photography that he made his most original and enduring contribution to art. Although his photographs were geared towards reportage and creating a pictorial record of the new Russia, many of them are outstanding for their ‘abstract’ qualities, partly created by his novel exploitation of unusual angles and viewpoints; his dramatic use of light and shadow influenced, for example, the great Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. In the mid-1930s, after Stalin's imposition of Socialist Realism, Rodchenko returned to easel painting. Initially he produced circus scenes, but in 1943 he began to paint abstract ‘drip’ pictures that—amazingly—prefigure those of Jackson Pollock. Rodchenko's wife, Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), was a painter and designer.