Rodchenko, Alexander

Rodchenko, Alexander (1891–1956). Russian painter, sculptor, industrial designer, and photographer, one of the leading Constructivists. He was born in St Petersburg and studied at the art school at Kazan, 1910–14, then at the Stroganov Art School in Moscow. After the 1917 Revolution he was one of the leading spirits in Narkompros and Inkhuk. His output was prolific and his artistic evolution was rapid, as he moved from Impressionist pictures in 1913 to pure abstracts, made with a ruler and compass, in 1916. He was influenced by Malevich's Suprematism, but was without Malevich's mystical leanings, and he coined the term ‘Non-Objective’ to describe his own more scientific outlook; his Non-Objective Painting: Black on Black (MOMA, New York, 1918) is a response to Malevich's White on White paintings, using curvilinear rather than rectilinear forms. In 1917 he began making three-dimensional constructions under the influence of his friend Tatlin, and some of these developed into graceful hanging sculptures. Like Tatlin and other Constructivists, however, Rodchenko came to reject pure art as a parasitical activity (‘The art of the future will not be the cosy decoration of family homes'), and after 1922 he devoted his energies to industrial design, typography, film and stage design, propaganda posters, and photography. His only journey outside Russia came in 1925, when he went to Paris to supervise part of the Soviet contribution to the ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes’ (the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name). In the mid1930s, after Socialist Realism had become the official art style of the Soviet Union, he 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 photography is probably the most original and enduring part of his output. It was geared towards reportage and creating a pictorial record of the new Russia, but much of it is remarkable for its ‘abstract’ qualities, partly created by his novel exploitation of unusual angles and viewpoints (he was accused of the deadly sin of formalism by some Soviet critics). Often he pointed his camera sharply upwards or downwards to create a powerful play of diagonals—‘Rodchenko perspective’ and ‘Rodchenko foreshortening’ became current terms in the 1920s—and his dramatic use of light and shadow influenced, for example, the great Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein.

Rodchenko's wife, Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), was a painter and designer. Of all the leading members of the avant-garde who switched to industrial design in the early 1920s, she was the only one who had received professional training in the applied arts. She is perhaps best known for her sports clothes, in which she used loud contrasts of colour (for purposes of identification) while rejecting as superfluous all ornamental or ‘aesthetic’ elements. She also wrote poetry and collaborated with her husband on various journalistic projects.