Tatlin, Vladimir (
b Kharkov [now Kharkiv], Ukraine, 12 Dec. 1885;
d Moscow, 31 May 1953). Russian painter, designer, and maker of abstract constructions, the founder of
Constructivism. He ran away to sea at the age of 18 and until 1914 combined painting with the life of a merchant seaman: many of his earlier pictures are of maritime subjects, notably
The Sailor (1911–12, Russian Mus., St Petersburg), a self-portrait. From 1910 he showed work at several avant-garde exhibitions in Russia and worked in close association with
Goncharova and
Larionov, who had known him as a boy. In 1914 Tatlin visited Berlin and Paris. He haunted
Picasso's studio and on his return to Russia began making a series of abstract
Painted Reliefs, Relief Constructions, and
Corner Reliefs inspired by Picasso's sculptural experiments. Very few of these revolutionary works survive, most being known only from photographs; it appears that they were made of a variety of materials—tin, glass, wood, plaster, etc.
After the October Revolution of 1917, Tatlin's constructions made from ‘real materials in real space’ were felt to be in accordance with the new ‘culture of materials’ and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the demand for socially orientated art, declaring: ‘The events of 1917 in the social field were already brought about in our art in 1914, when material, volume and construction were laid as its basis.’ In 1919 he was commissioned to design the monument to the Third International (the organization set up by the Bolsheviks to coordinate the activities of Communist movements throughout the world). The huge monument—in the form of a leaning, openwork, spiral tower in iron and glass—was intended for a position in the centre of Moscow. It was to be both functional and symbolic, housing various offices of the revolutionary government and including such features as an immense projector for throwing propaganda images onto clouds. Tatlin described it as ‘A union of purely plastic forms (painting, sculpture and architecture) for a utilitarian purpose’. A model was exhibited in December 1920 at the exhibition of the VIIIth Congress of the Soviets.
Gabo condemned the design as impracticable and it was never executed (it was intended to be much bigger than the Eiffel Tower), but it is recognized as the outstanding symbol of Soviet Constructivism. (The original model has been destroyed, but there is a reconstruction in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.)
The monument was the culmination of Tatlin's artistic career, and the rest of it is something of an anticlimax. He was active in teaching and administration, and his own work was mainly in the field of
applied art, designing furniture, workers' clothes, etc. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he devoted his energies to designing a glider, which he called
Letatlin (a compound of his name and the Russian word for ‘to fly’). From the 1930s his main activity was theatre design, and his later years were spent in lonely obscurity. In 1948 the Soviet government, demanding
Socialist Realism in the arts, declared him an ‘enemy of the people’.
