Alexander Rodchenko: Art of the Times

Article: Christopher George 

​​Our fascination with the Russian art’s, especially photography and its illustrated photomontage from the communist area is endless.
 
With a host of galleries around the world specialising in this format; it leaves our desire to explore this still little known and emerging cultural gap in history ever more vivacious. 

​Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer, and one of the founders of the constructivism.
 
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia, beginning in 1913. Its influence was pervasive, with major effects upon architecture, graphic design, industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and to some extent music.
 
In 1921 Rodchenko became a member of the Productivist group, which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films.

​Much of the works of 20th century graphic designers, are a direct result of Rodchenko's earlier work in the field.
 
A leading representative of the Russian avant-garde, Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) revolutionised the world of graphic art, design, and photography.
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This book covers stark portraits of his avant-garde contemporises, photo-reportages in factories and building sites, that evoke both the faces and spirit of an age of great hope and equally great contradictions. In retrospect, we are aware of the social enslavement of the population, for the benefit of Russia’s gigantic building projects. Non-more prolific than the White Sea–Baltic Canal, that was constructed by forced labor of gulag inmates. During it’s construction by a total of 126,000 workers, about 12,000 died according to the official records. 

From the photomontages created for Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem Pro Eto (About That) to the covers designed for the magazine Novy LEF (New LEF - a reference for the revolutionary intelligentsia) to his cinema posters and book illustrations, Rodchenko’s works bear witness to his many collaborations and friendships, evoking not just the image of a brilliantly creative personality but a unique phase in 20th century history.
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Author Olga Sviblova has brought together a huge body of works, visual, graphic designs and typography from the early 20th Centaury that was bravely and idealistically looking to the future.