CONSTRUCTIVISM

Constructivism movement was a particularly austere branch of abstract art founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko in Russia around 1915

The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world. Vladimir Tatlin was crucially influenced by Pablo Picasso’s cubist constructions (Construction 1914) which he saw in Picasso’s studio in Paris in 1913. These were three-dimensional still lifes made of scrap materials. Tatlin began to make his own but they were completely abstract and made of industrial materials.

By 1921 Russian artists who followed Tatlin’s ideas were calling themselves constructivists and in 1923 a manifesto was published in their magazine Lef:

The material formation of the object is to be substituted for its aesthetic combination. The object is to be treated as a whole and thus will be of no discernible ‘style’ but simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like. Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials.

Constructivism was suppressed in Russia in the 1920s but was brought to the West by Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner and has been a major influence on modern sculpture.

Constructivism Art
Constructivism art movement

Constructivism Movement Artists

Joaquin Torres Garcia, Spanish, 1874 – 1949 
Aleksandra Ekster, Russian, 1882 – 1949 
Vadym Meller, Ukrainian, 1884 – 1962 
Janos Mattis-Teutsch, Hungarian, 1884 – 1960 
Vladimir Tatlin, Russian, 1885 – 1953 
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German, 1886 – 1969 
Lajos Kassak, Hungarian, 1887 – 1967 
Josef Albers, German, 1888 – 1976 
Oskar Schlemmer, German, 1888 – 1943 
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Swiss, 1889 – 1943 
Lyubov Popova, Russian, 1889 – 1924 
Peter Laszlo Peri, British, 1889 – 1967 
Naum Gabo, Russian, 1890 – 1977, 16
Carl Buchheister, German, 1890 – 1964 
Vytautas Kairiukstis, Lithuanian, 1890 – 1961 
El Lissitzky, Russian, 1890 – 1941 
Erich Buchholz, German, 1891 – 1972 
Alexander Rodchenko, Russian, 1891 – 1956 
Emilio Pettoruti, 1892 – 1971 
Sandor Bortnyik, Hungarian, 1893 – 1976 
Henryk Stazewski, Polish, 1894 – 1988 
Vasyl Yermylov, Ukrainians, 1894 – 1968 
Henryk Berlewi, French, 1894 – 1967 
M. H. Maxy, Jewish, 1895 – 1971 
Anatol Petrytsky, Ukrainian, 1895 – 1964 
Alexander Khvostenko-Khvostov, Russian, 1895 – 1968 
Marcel Janco, Jewish, 1895 – 1984 
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Hungarian, 1895 – 1946 
Katarzyna Kobro, Russian, 1898 – 1951 
Anni Albers, American, 1899 – 1994 
Anton Prinner, Hungarian, 1902 – 1983 
Richard Paul Lohse, Swiss, 1902 – 1988 
José Pedro Costigliolo, Uruguayan, 1902 – 1985 
Burgoyne Diller, American, 1906 – 1965 
György Kepes, Hungarian, c.1906 – c.2001 
Petre Otskheli, Georgian, 1907 – 1937 
Edgar Negret, Colombian, 1920 – 2012 
Ramirez Villamizar, Colombian, 1922 – 2004
Mateo Manaure, Venezuela, 1926- 2018

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