A quick intro:Life & ArtAdriana Onita

b. St. Petersburg 1891 – d. Moscow 1956,

involved in politics throughout his life

Painter, sculptor, designer, photographer

Major player in Russian Constructivism, links to other avant-garde movements like Futurism, Dadaism, Cubism…

3 Quick Facts!

Influenced by Tatlin and Malevich. How?

Suprematist Composition - White on WhiteTatlin's Tower maket 1919

Painter

Abandons painting, fine art

Constructivist movement

Experimentation with various

Media

Russian Revolution

Meets Futurists

Advertising, book covers, photography

Repressive policies

Examples of his “art”

Art as an object that refers to nothing but itself--in Rodchenko's words, "the inventing or perfecting of something, rather than a reflection or portrayal."

Philosophy on ArtStrives for an “objective, impersonal art, stripped of description and narrative, and devoid of spiritual or metaphysical trappings.”

You Could Have It So Much Better

Studio album by Franz Ferdinand

Appropriation of Rodchenko

Our duty is to experiment, make objects unfamiliar

and forms difficult.

Multiple perspectives, foreshortening, motion, patterns, sense of dislocation

Characteristics of Rodchenko’s photography

Oblique angles reminiscent of the dynamic diagonal compositions of his early paintings

Photography: mechanical and objective, therefore socially progressive

Fire escape with a man, 1925

"One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

Gymnastics, 1936

Links with Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera?

Alexander Rodchenko, Gathering for a demonstration, 1932

Adriana Onita, Semana Santa, 2011, Granada

A part of Edmonton (left), Lisbon (below), 2011

Adriana Onita

Left: A part of Moscow,1927Alexander Rodchenko

Rodchenko/Vertov’sfascination with transportation

Thanks!

• All biographical information found at MoMA

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1998/rodchenko/index.html

All Rodchenko images found at

http://www.allart.org/art_20th_century/rodchenko1.html