1. A quick intro:
Life & Art
Adriana Onita

2. 3 Quick Facts!
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. Tatlin's Tower maket 1919 Suprematist Composition - White on White
Influenced by Tatlin and Malevich. How?

4. Painter
Repressive Russian
policies Revolution
Experimentation Abandons
with various painting,
Media fine art
Advertising,
book covers, Meets
photography Futurists
Constructivist
movement

5. Examples of his
“art”

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

7. Appropriation of
Rodchenko
You Could Have It So Much Better
Studio album by Franz Ferdinand

8. Our duty is to experiment,
make objects unfamiliar
and forms difficult.

9. Characteristics of Rodchenko’s photography
Multiple perspectives, foreshortening, motion,
patterns, sense of dislocation
Oblique angles reminiscent of the dynamic diagonal
compositions of his early paintings
Photography: mechanical and objective, therefore
socially progressive

10. 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."

11. Gymnastics, 1936
Links with Vertov’s Man with a
Movie Camera?

12. Alexander Rodchenko, Gathering for a Adriana Onita, Semana Santa,
demonstration, 1932 2011, Granada

13. Left: A part of Moscow,
1927
Alexander Rodchenko
A part of Edmonton (left),
Lisbon (below), 2011
Adriana Onita
Rodchenko/Vertov’s
fascination with
transportation

14. 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/rodche
nko1.html