Exhibition dates: 28th May – 14th August 2011
Many thankx to Fotomuseum Winterthur for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Boats
1926
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
© A. Rodchenko – W. Stepanova Archive
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Pine trees, Pushkino
1927
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
© A. Rodchenko – W. Stepanova Archive
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Laying Asphalt, Leningrad Highway
1929
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
Collection of Moscow House of Photography Museum / Multimedia Art Museum Moscow
© A. Rodchenko – W. Stepanova Archive
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Radio listeners
1929
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
Collection Museum Moscow House of Photography / Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
© A. Rodchenko – W. Stepanova Archive
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Shukhov Tower
1929
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
21.6 x 29.5cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Stairs
1930
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
Collection of Moscow House of Photography Museum / Multimedia Art Museum Moscow
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Bus
1932
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Morning exercises, Student Campus in Lefortovo
1932
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
22.8 x 29.5cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956) / Warwara Stepanowa (Russian, 1894-1958)
Young Gliders
1933
Sketch of a double page for the magazine USSR under Construction
Gelatin silver print, Vintage print, Photomontage
41.2 x 60.5cm
Moscow House of Photography Museum
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Modernism made photography what it is. It gave it self-confidence and made it trust itself. Self confident because photography in the 1920s recognised and developed its own possibilities and qualities: a probing vision of the world, an investigation of the visible reality from various perspectives, direct, clear, from above, below, behind, from the front, but without references to the pool of art history. Russian Constructivism is an important part of this great shift. In 1924, Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956), already known as a painter, sculptor, and designer, conquered traditional photography with the slogan “Our duty is to experiment!” This resulted in a reconsideration of the concept and role of photography. Conceptual work entered the stage. Instead of being an illustration of reality, photography became a means to visually represent intellectual constructs, and the artist became an “artist-engineer”.
Yet Rodchenko was much more than a dynamic image maker. He wrote manifestos to accompany almost every one of his picture series, tirelessly promoting his concept of Russian Constructivism to the world. Destabilising diagonals, harsh contrasts, tilted views, and picture and text collages are design elements found in his photographs. To this day they form, together with his texts, a unique document of the indefatigable artistic energy that is also manifest in Alexander Rodchenko’s posters, invitation cards, and publications.
At the beginning of the 1920s, Rodchenko worked together with his friend the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky on bold, photographic illustrations for Mayakovsky’s volume of poems Pro Eto. Rodchenko soon became coeditor, with Mayakovsky, of the magazine LEV (Left Front of the Arts), and was responsible for its cover designs in the years 1923-24. He designed posters for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin and was commissioned to design the Soviet pavilion to the world exhibition in Paris in 1925. The experimental and innovative “new vision” was celebrated across Europe. Rodchencko took part in the pioneering exhibition Film und Foto (Film and Photo) of the Stuttgart Werkbund in 1929. Yet already at the beginning of the 1930s, the mood had shifted in Russia; photography was increasingly being instrumentalised by the state in the interests of socialism. Rodchenko was repeatedly forced to defend himself against accusations of formalism made over his photograph Pioneer with Trumpet, and, in the end, he was expelled from the October artists group, which he himself had cofounded in 1928, for refusing to adapt his style of working to the new times.
Press release from the Fotomuseum Winterthur website
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Lilia Brik. Portrait for the poster “Knigi”
1924
Vintage print
Collection of Moscow House of Photography Museum / Multimedia Art Museum Moscow
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Caricature Showing Osip Brik, variant of a cover for LEF Magazine
1924
Gelatin silver print
24.2 x 17.9cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Portrait of Mother
1924
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
22.7 x 16.5cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Vladimir Mayakovsky
1924
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Mosselprom Building
1926
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
29 x 23.3cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Varvara Stepanova
1928
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
Collection of Moscow House of Photography Museum / Multimedia Art Museum Moscow
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova (1894-1958) was a Russian artist. With her husband Alexander Rodchenko, she was associated with the Constructivist branch of the Russian avant-garde, which rejected aesthetic values in favour of revolutionary ones. Her activities extended into propaganda, poetry, stage scenery and textile designs.
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Gears
1929
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
28.8 x 23cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Pioneer with a trumpet
1930
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
44.5 x 38.5cm
Moscow House of Photography Museum
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Girl with a Leica
1934
Vintage print on silver gelatin paper
45 x 29.5cm
Private collection
© Rodchenko’s Archive /
2011, ProLitteris, Zurich
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CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)
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