Gallery · Room 07 · Russia, 1915–1934
Constructivism
Art put to work for a revolution: red wedges, photomontage and type at an angle.
Wall text
Constructivism began in Russia around 1915 with Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, who believed art should reflect the modern industrial world and serve it. After the 1917 revolution its artists turned from easel painting to posters, books, furniture, textiles and stage sets. In March 1921 seven of them, including Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and the brothers Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, formed the First Working Group of Constructivists in Moscow.
El Lissitzky's Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, printed in 1920 for the Red Army on the Western Front during the Civil War, turned politics into geometry: a red wedge pierces a white circle. Gustav Klutsis, a pioneer of political photomontage, taught color at the VKhUTEMAS art school from 1924 until it closed in 1930.
As the state turned to realism, Constructivism was suppressed. Klutsis was executed by the secret police in 1938. Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner carried its ideas west, where they shaped modern sculpture. Its book designs inspired Western typographers such as Jan Tschichold.
