Stories of great photographers. Alexander Rodchenko

December 5, 1891 in beautiful St. Petersburg. His mother was an ordinary laundress, and his father was a theater worker who was engaged in props. When the boy was 11 years old, the family moved to live in a beautiful city - Kazan, in which Alexander after 3 years graduated from elementary school at the church parish.

In 1911, the young man entered the art school. N. I. Feshina, in which even after 3 years he meets a beautiful girl named Varvara Stepanova. Being at the age of 23, the lovers begin a happy life together, having moved to Moscow. At this age, he was drafted into the army, in which he served for another 3 whole years. The future photographer was in charge of the economy of one Sanitary train at the Moscow Zemstvo.

After the army, Rodchenko begins to work in the trade union of painters in Moscow, where he basically organizes normal working conditions for all young people and beginners. Simultaneously with this work, Alexander, together with his colleagues, is working on the design of a local cafe called Pittoresk.

A year later, Alexander begins to develop a series of his own graphic, spatial, pictorial, abstract and geometric works. He was also interested in the direction of minimalism. After some time, Rodchenko begins to participate in permanent exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde and in competitions dedicated to architectural topics.

In his small texts under the titles “Everything is an experiment” and “Line”, he recorded his personally accumulated creativity over many years. His attitude to art was simply phenomenal, Rodchenko characterized the texts as something new in his life, which should not be overlooked.

For him, all this was a great opportunity for self-expression and self-improvement, since every artistic particle invested in his work was a microelement of his big and kind soul.

In 1918, Alexander Rodchenko painted two impressive paintings "White Circle" and "Black on Black" - the latter was made exclusively from oil paints.

The following year, the artist worked on a three-part piece of art, which was executed in monochrome colors.

He constantly experimented and discovered something new for himself. Everything he did in the field of art and painting led him to construct real objects. He faced the most difficult and interesting task: to create a new unique thing from his own ideas and thoughts.

Alexander in 1919 worked on works from flat cardboard elements - this composition was called "Folding and Dismantling". In 1920, he was interested in hanging mobiles that were cut out of plywood of simple geometric shapes - these works he called " Planes that reflect light".

And already in 1921, he invented spatial structures from ordinary wooden slats, from which a very interesting design “According to the principle of identical shapes” came out. In the same year, the painter drew a line in this direction and decided to switch to industrial art.

Further career and personal development

After some time, Rodchenko begins to lecture at the woodworking, as well as at the metalworking faculty of the Moscow educational institution Vkhutemas-Vkhutein. For ten years he has been working as a professor and teaching young people how to design and create multifunctional items that will be useful to people both in everyday life and for large-scale purposes.

He showed how to give any manufactured object its own unique and original expressive form, just as how to give a transforming function to an ordinary thing. During all his teaching activities, Alexander Rodchenko worked at the Institute of Artistic Culture as chairman of the commission.

In the period from 1923 to 1930, Alexander was a member of the Lef and Ref groups, concurrently worked as an artist for two popular magazines: the eponymous Lef and a certain New Lef.

He actively participated in the "Association of Modern Architects", and in 1925 he was sent on a business trip to Paris to professionally design the Soviet section of the "International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts". There, the photographer carried out his first interior project "Workers' Club".

In the same year, Alexander received a silver medal at the Paris exhibition for the best advertising posters, it was he who authored the famous panels on the same Mosselprom House in Kalashny Lane in Moscow.

Since 1924, Alexander Rodchenko began to professionally study photography, his most famous works of that time are “Portrait of a Mother” and portraits of colleagues from LEF, as well as images in photographs of famous artists and architects.

After 2 years, he publishes his first foreshortened shots of various buildings in the Soviet Cinema magazine. He demonstrated his works from photo shoots in such a way that they became real propaganda of a completely new documentary view of our world. And Alexander always defended the position on the need to study and apply absolutely all points of view in photography.

In 1928, Rodchenko participated in an exhibition called "Soviet photography for 10 years." His wide popularity and worldwide fame arose due to his constant experiments with angles during the next photo shoot. A year later, he staged a performance based on the play by A. G. Glebov "Inga" in the famous Moscow Theater of the Revolution.

In the early thirties, Alexander Rodchenko worked as a photojournalist in a newspaper called Vechernyaya Moskva, and also paid attention to popular Soviet-era magazines: Radio Listener, Ogonyok, and many others. He was actively interested in and developed in the film industry, reportage photography, and was also a talented inventor of original furniture, unusual costumes and original scenery.

In 1930, when Rodchenko was almost 40 years old, he co-founded a photo group called "October", which included talented and professional photographers who shared the principles of innovative photography. A year later, in the Printing House, Alexander published several controversial photographs under the names "Pioneer" and "Pioneer Trumpeter".

And in 1931, here he showed his best dynamic photos “Vahtan Sawmill”, which caused a storm of criticism and accusations of formalism that did not cease for a long time, since the photographs did not correspond to the tasks of proletarian ethics.

After working in his own photo group for about two years, the photographer decided to leave this place and start developing a photojournalist in himself, getting a job at the popular Izogiz publishing house. A year later, he began working as one of the main graphic designers for the magazine under the name "USSR at a Construction Site".

Together with his charming wife Varvara, he worked on the photo albums "10 Years of Uzbekistan", "Soviet Aviation" and many others.

Recent works and death

Alexander Rodchenko continued his favorite activity as a painter, thanks to which he soon became a member of the jury and artist of numerous exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the professional union of film workers.

This brilliant man today is known not only in the circles of the former countries that were part of the USSR, but also in the West. In the late twenties, he often sent his best work from photo shoots to France, Spain, the USA, Great Britain and Czechoslovakia.

After socialist realism was legalized in the mid-thirties as the only correct style and method of presenting contemporary art, all the work of Alexander Rodchenko began to be severely criticized from all sides.

All this persecution lasted until 1951, until he was removed from the Union of Soviet Artists. And when all these disagreements subsided and the opinions of critics came to naught, he was reinstated as a member in 1954.

At the same time, the gifted master decided to return to painting and over the course of several years he painted a whole selection of paintings dedicated to the circus and its workers. For all the time of the forties, the author created many different decorative non-objective works.

When the notorious World War II began, he and his family were evacuated to the city of Ocher, and after that they moved to live in Perm. In 1942 he returned to Moscow, where he again began to work as a graphic designer for various exhibitions of contemporary art.

A year later, he became the chief painter of the capital's House of Technology. Then Rodchenko again worked with V. Mayakovsky, they created a whole selection of monographic posters, and a year before his death, the photographer, together with his beloved wife Varvara Fedorovna, wrote sketches for the design of the famous poem of the great Russian writer called “Good!”.

The constructivist Alexander Rodchenko passed away on December 3, 1956 at the age of 64 in the city of Moscow, this outstanding photographer was buried at the New Donskoy Cemetery.

What do you think of his life? Please write in the comments.

With absolute sincerity, Maxim Izmailov.

Alexander Rodchenko is as much a symbol of Soviet photography as Vladimir Mayakovsky is of Soviet poetry. Western photographers, from the founders of the Magnum photo agency to contemporary stars like Albert Watson, still use the techniques Rodchenko introduced into the photographic medium. In addition, if it were not for Rodchenko, there would be no modern design, which was greatly influenced by his posters, collages and interiors. Unfortunately, the rest of Rodchenko's work has been forgotten - and after all, he not only photographed and painted posters, but was also engaged in painting, sculpture, theater and architecture.

Anatoly Skurikhin. Alexander Rodchenko at the construction of the White Sea Canal. 1933© Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Alexander Rodchenko. Funeral of Vladimir Lenin. Photo collage for the Young Guard magazine. 1924

Alexander Rodchenko. The building of the newspaper "Izvestia". 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Alexander Rodchenko. Spatial photo-animation "Self-animals". 1926© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Rodchenko and art

Alexander Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg in 1891 in the family of a theatrical props. Since childhood, he was involved in the world of art: the apartment was directly above the stage, through which it was necessary to pass in order to go down to the street. In 1901 the family moved to Kazan. First, Alexander decides to study as a dental technician. However, he soon abandoned this profession and became a volunteer at the Kazan Art School (he could not enter there due to the lack of a certificate of secondary education: Rodchenko graduated from only four classes of the parochial school).

In 1914, futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burlyuk and Vasily Kamensky came to Kazan. Rodchenko went to their evening and wrote in his diary: “The evening ended, and the excited, but in different ways, audience slowly dispersed. Enemies and fans. The second few. Clearly, I was not only a fan, but much more, I was an adherent. This evening was a turning point: it was after him that the student of the Kazan Art School, who is fond of Gauguin and the World of Art, realizes that he wants to connect his life with futuristic art. In the same year, Rodchenko met his future wife, a student of the same Kazan art school, Varvara Stepanova. At the end of 1915 Rodchenko moved to Moscow following Stepanova.

Rodchenko, Tatlin and Malevich

Once in Moscow, through mutual friends, Alexander meets Vladimir Tatlin, one of the leaders of the avant-garde, and he invites Rodchenko to take part in the futuristic exhibition "Shop". Instead of an entry fee, the artist is asked to help with the organization by selling tickets and telling visitors about the meaning of the work. At the same time, Rodchenko met Kazimir Malevich, but, unlike Tatlin, he did not feel sympathy, and even Malevich's ideas seemed alien to him. Rodchenko is more interested in Tatlin's sculptural painting and his interest in construction and materials than Malevich's reflections on pure art. Later, Rodchenko would write about Tatlin: “I learned everything from him: the attitude to the profession, to things, to the material, to food and all life, and this left a mark on my whole life ... Of all the contemporary artists I met, there is no equal to him".

Kazimir Malevich. White on white. 1918 MoMA‎

Alexander Rodchenko. From the Black on Black series. 1918© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / MoMA‎

In response to Malevich's "White on White" Rodchenko wrote a series of works "Black on Black". These seemingly similar works solve opposite problems: with the help of monochrome, Rodchenko uses the texture of the material as a new feature of pictorial art. Developing the idea of ​​a new art inspired by science and technology, for the first time he uses "non-artistic" tools - a compass, a ruler, a roller.

Rodchenko and photomontage

Alexander Rodchenko. "The Men of All". Cover project for a collection of constructivist poets. 1924 Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

One of the first in the Soviet Union, Rodchenko realized the potential of photomontage as a new art form and began to experiment with this technique in the field of illustration and agitation. The advantage of photomontage over painting and photography is obvious: due to the absence of distracting elements, a concise collage becomes the most vivid and accurate way of non-verbal transmission of information.

Work in this technique will bring Rodchenko all-Union fame. He illustrates magazines, books, creates advertising and propaganda posters.

"Advertising Designers" Mayakovsky and Rodchenko

Rodchenko is considered one of the ideologists of constructivism, a direction in art where form completely merges with function. An example of this constructivist thinking is a 1925 advertising poster for The Book. El Lissitzky’s poster “Hit the Whites with a Red Wedge” is taken as the basis, while Rodchenko leaves only a geometric construction from it - a triangle invading the space of a circle - and fills it with a completely new meaning. He is no longer an artist-creator, he is an artist-constructor.

Alexander Rodchenko. Poster "Lengiz: books on all branches of knowledge." 1924 TASS

El Lissitzky. Poster "Beat the whites with a red wedge!". 1920 Wikimedia Commons

In 1920, Rodchenko met Mayakovsky. After a rather curious case related to the advertising campaign "" (Mayakovsky criticized Rodchenko's slogan, thinking that some second-rate poet wrote it, thereby seriously offending Rodchenko), Mayakovsky and Rodchenko decide to combine their forces. Mayakovsky comes up with the text, Rodchenko is engaged in graphic design. The creative association "Advertising Constructor" Mayakovsky - Rodchenko "" is responsible for the 1920s - posters of GUM, Mosselprom, Rezinotrest and other Soviet organizations.

Creating new posters, Rodchenko studied Soviet and foreign photographic magazines, cutting out everything that might be useful, closely communicating with photographers who helped him shoot unique subjects, and finally in 1924 he bought his own camera. And instantly becomes one of the main photographers in the country.

Rodchenko-photographer

Photographing Rodchenko begins quite late, being an already established artist, illustrator and teacher at VKhUTEMAS. He transfers the ideas of constructivism into new art, showing space and dynamics through lines and planes in the picture. From the array of these experiments, we can single out two important techniques that Rodchenko discovers for world photography and which are still relevant today.

Alexander Rodchenko. Sukharevsky boulevard. 1928© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Alexander Rodchenko. Pioneer trumpeter. 1932© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Alexander Rodchenko. Ladder. 1930© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

Alexander Rodchenko. Girl with a Leica camera. 1934© Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Museum "Moscow House of Photography"

The first take is angles. For Rodchenko, photography is a way to convey new ideas to society. In the era of airplanes and skyscrapers, this new art should teach you to see from all sides and show familiar objects from unexpected points of view. Rodchenko is particularly interested in the top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This one of the most popular techniques today in the twenties became a real revolution.

The second approach is called diagonal. Even in painting, Rodchenko identified the line as the basis of any image: "The line is the first and the last, both in painting and in any construction in general." It is the line that will become the main constructive element in his further work - photo-montage, architecture and, of course, photography. Most often, Rodchenko will use the diagonal, since, in addition to the constructive load, it also carries the necessary dynamics; a balanced static composition is another anachronism against which he will actively fight.

Rodchenko and socialist realism

In 1928, a slanderous letter was published in the Soviet Photo magazine accusing Rodchenko of plagiarizing Western art. This attack turned out to be a harbinger of more serious troubles - in the thirties, avant-garde figures were condemned one after another for formalism. Rodchenko was very upset by the accusation: “How can it be, I wholeheartedly support the Soviet government, I work with all my might with faith and love for it, and suddenly we are wrong,” he wrote in his diary.

After this work, Rodchenko again falls into favor. Now he is among the creators of a new, "proletarian" aesthetics. His photographs of sports parades are the apotheosis of the socialist realist idea and a vivid example for young painters (Alexander Deineka is among his students). But since 1937, relations with the authorities again went wrong. Rodchenko does not accept the totalitarian regime that is coming into force, and the work no longer brings him satisfaction.

Rodchenko in 1940-50s

Alexander Rodchenko. Acrobatic. 1940 Archive of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova / Moscow House of Photography Museum

After the war, Rodchenko created almost nothing - he only designed books and albums with his wife. Tired of politics in art, he turns to pictorialism, a direction that appeared in photography back in the 80s of the 19th century. Photographers-pictorialists tried to get away from the nature-like nature of photography and shot with special soft-focus lenses, changing light and shutter speed to create a picturesque effect and bring photography closer to painting.. He is fond of classical theater and the circus - after all, these are the last areas where politics does not determine the artistic program. A New Year's letter from his daughter Varvara says a lot about Rodchenko's mood and work in the late forties: “Daddy! I would like you to draw something for the works this year. Don't think that I want you to do everything in "socialist realism". No, so that you can do what you can do. And every minute, every day I remember that you are sad and do not draw. It seems to me that you would then be more cheerful and would know that you can do such things. I kiss you and wish you a Happy New Year, Mulya.

In 1951, Rodchenko was expelled from the Union of Artists and only four years later, thanks to the endless energy of Varvara Stepanova, was restored. Alexander Rodchenko died in 1956, just short of his first photographic and graphic exhibition, also organized by Stepanova.

The material was prepared jointly with the Multimedia Art Museum for the exhibition "Experiences for the Future".

Sources

• Rodchenko A. Revolution in photography.
• Rodchenko A. Photography is an art.
• Rodchenko A., Tretyakov S. Self-beasts.
• Rodchenko A. M. Experiences for the future.
• Visiting Rodchenko and Stepanova!

From the life of the first Russian designer and master of photography

the site starts a big project “50 most important photographers of our time”. We will talk about photographers who had a great influence on the development of photographic art. About the authors who formed the concept of “modern photography” with their works. About the great masters of their craft, whose names and works are simply necessary to know.

Strangely, most commercial photographers don't think about the roots of their profession, focusing only on colleagues or a couple of randomly familiar names in their work. But in this sense, our profession differs little from the profession of, say, an artist. Ask the master of the brush if he knows any of the famous artists - most likely, in response you will hear a short lecture on painting, in which the interlocutor will talk about his favorite artistic styles, schools, most likely will accompany the story with a lot of dates, names and references to works . Yes, most artists have a special education (at least at the level of an art school), where they learn about all this. But to a greater extent, it is, of course, self-education. Artists need to know the global context, because it is impossible to create works in isolation from the work of great masters, without knowing the basics. So why do photographers think differently?

The first professional on our list is a great Russian artist and photographer Alexander Rodchenko.

Even if you try to describe the activities of Alexander Rodchenko exclusively in #tags, you get several pages of text. The most important member of the Russian avant-garde, artist, sculptor, graphic artist, photographer ... And much more.

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg, studied at the Kazan Art School. Feshin, where he met his future wife, a talented artist Varvara Stepanova. Subsequently, he held a number of important positions, including the post of chairman of the Institute of Artistic Culture (in this position he replaced another great artist - Wassily Kandinsky)

“Work for life, not for palaces, temples, cemeteries and museums”

This was his motto, fully reflecting the mood of the avant-garde artists of that time. Rejecting “decoration” and going against the aesthetic criteria of art, they endowed their works - from paintings to architectural forms - with many details, each of which had an important, constructive function. Hence the name of one of the main areas of their work - constructivism. “The art of the future,” said Rodchenko, “will not be a cozy decoration for family apartments. It will be equal in necessity to 48-story skyscrapers, grandiose bridges, wireless telegraph, aeronautics, submarines, and so on.”

Rodchenko began his work at a time of great change: outside the window was what would later be called the Leninist Soviet project. Hopes for a bright communist future were inspiring.

Rodchenko and photomontage

Among other things, Rodchenko is famous for his experiments in the field of photomontage - he was actually a pioneer of this art in Russia. A sort of master of Photoshop, but in the days of the USSR. It must be understood that Rodchenko, as a true communist and supporter of the Soviet regime, tried to direct his abilities to strengthening the new order of life, therefore he was happy to engage in propaganda activities. So, it was in the technique of photomontage that the most interesting and memorable propaganda posters of that time were designed. Masterfully combining text boxes, black-and-white photographs and color images, Rodchenko did what would now be called poster design - by the way, he is often called the ancestor of design and advertising in Russia. It was Rodchenko Mayakovsky who entrusted the design of his book “About It”.

Rodchenko and photography

Rodchenko, like all Russian avant-garde artists, experimented with forms and technology. So he took up photography, moreover, reportage photography. Using unexpected angles (the term "Rodchenko's angle" is often found in art history literature), forcing the viewer to twist the prints in front of the eyes (or head in front of the prints) and creating images that seem to be about to start moving, he has established himself as one of the most progressive and pioneering photographers of the time. Although then there were, frankly, fewer of them (photographers) than now. Rodchenko plays with the visual means of photography, honing them to the limit. Rhythmic pattern, compositionally perfect interweaving of lines - he masterfully manages all this. He was one of the first to use multiple shots of an object in action - storyboarding. Rodchenko was not afraid to violate the recently established photographic canons - he made portraits from the bottom up or deliberately “filled up the horizon”. With his photographic “eye”, he seemed to be striving to cover the entire Soviet Union. Perhaps that is why he took many pictures (especially reportage shots from demonstrations) while standing on stairs, roofs, or being in other non-obvious points.

Rodchenko continued his experiments even after the "death" of the avant-garde project - but under socialist realism and Stalin this was no longer encouraged. In 1951 he was even expelled from the Union of Artists and rehabilitated only in 1954 - 2 years before his death.

Today, the most important educational institution in the field of visual arts, the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, bears the name of Alexander Rodchenko.

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (November 23 (December 5), 1891, St. Petersburg - December 3, 1956, Moscow) - Soviet painter, graphic artist, sculptor, photographer, theater and film artist. One of the founders of constructivism, the founder of design and advertising in the USSR.

Biography of Alexander Rodchenko

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg in 1891. Father - Mikhail Mikhailovich Rodchenko (1852-1907), theater props. Mother - Olga Evdokimovna Rodchenko (1865-1933), washerwoman. In 1902, the family moved to Kazan, where in 1905 he graduated from the Kazan parochial elementary school.

In 1911-1914 he studied at the Kazan art school with N. I. Feshin, where in 1914 he met Varvara Stepanova. Since 1916, Rodchenko and Stepanova began their life together in Moscow. In the same year, he was drafted into the army and until the beginning of 1917 served as the manager of the sanitary train of the Moscow Zemstvo.

In 1917, immediately after the February Revolution, a trade union of painters was created in Moscow. Rodchenko becomes the secretary of his Young Federation, and is mainly involved in organizing normal living conditions and work for young artists.

Simultaneously with his work in the People's Commissariat, he developed a series of graphic, pictorial and spatial abstract-geometric minimalist works.

Since 1916, he began to participate in the most important exhibitions of the Russian avant-garde (at the exhibition "Shop", organized by Vladimir Tatlin) and in architectural competitions.

Creativity Rodchenko

He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, considered his work as a huge experiment in which each work represents a minimally pictorial element in form and is limited in expressive means.

In 1917-1918 he worked with a plane, in 1919 he painted "Black on Black", works based only on texture, in 1919-1920 he introduced lines and points as independent pictorial forms, in 1921 at the exhibition "5 × 5 = 25" (Moscow ) showed a triptych of three monochrome colors (yellow, red, blue).

In addition to painting and drawing, he was engaged in spatial constructions.

The first cycle - "Folding and Dismantling" (1918) - from flat cardboard elements, the second - "Planes reflecting light" (1920-1921) - freely hanging mobiles from concentric shapes cut out of plywood (circle, square, ellipse, triangle and hexagon ), the third - "According to the principle of identical forms" (1920-1921) - spatial structures from standard wooden bars, connected according to the combinatorial principle. In 1921 he summed up his pictorial searches and announced the transition to "production art"

The Fire's Man

He was a remarkable artist of the book: a masterpiece of pictorial poetics of the absurd in the spirit of Dadaism was his photo collages for Mayakovsky's book About This (1923, Mayakovsky Museum, Moscow).

An artist of a wide profile, Rodchenko also reformed in a constructivist way the style of furniture (project of a workers' club for the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris, 1924), clothing (his own overalls in 1923, reminiscent of modern denim cut), advertising and industrial graphics (posters, advertisements, candy wrappers, labels for "Mosselprom", "Rezinotrest", GUM and "Mospoligraf", 1923-1925), finally, a film poster.

He also made an outstanding contribution to avant-garde scenography (furniture and costumes for the play Bedbug in the theater of V.E. Meyerhold, 1929; etc.). In 1926-1928 he worked in cinema as a production designer for films. Your friend L.V. Kuleshova, 1927; Moscow in October B.V. Barnet, 1927; Albidum S.S. Obolensky, 1928; Doll with millions of S.P. Komarova, 1928.

In the 1930s, the master's work seemed to bifurcate. On the one hand, he is engaged in agitpropaganda, which is firmly embedded in the program of socialist realism (the design of collective books The White Sea-Baltic Canal named after I.V. Stalin, 1934; Red Army, 1938; Soviet Aviation, 1939; etc.).

On the other hand, he seeks to preserve inner freedom, the symbol of which for him since the mid-1930s has been the images of the circus (in photo reports, as well as in easel painting, to which he returns during this period). In the 1940s, adjoining "unofficial art", Rodchenko wrote a series of "decorative compositions" in the spirit of abstract expressionism.

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a theatrical props and laundress. At the insistence of his father, he went to get the profession of a doctor.

“When I was 14 years old, I climbed onto the roof in the summer and wrote a diary in small books, full of sadness and anguish from my uncertain position, I wanted to learn to draw, but I was taught to become a dental technician ...,” Rodchenko recalled in his autobiographical notes.

At the age of 20, Rodchenko left the medical school and first entered the Kazan Art School.

In 1916, Rodchenko was drafted into the army. He will manage the economy of the hospital train. So the medical past will save him from being sent to the front.

In the early 20s, Rodchenko-Stepanov formed one of the most famous creative duets. Together they developed the so-called "new way of life for a new life", combined many arts and artistic techniques. Rodchenko became a professor of the painting department of VKHUTEMAS, at the famous exhibition "5x5 = 25" he demonstrates a triptych of three monochrome colors "Smooth Color".

And in 1923, Rodchenko-Stepanov designed a new type of clothing - overalls, designed to glorify labor activity and hide gender differences between people of the future.

In 1925, the first and last "abroad" happened in Rodchenko's life: he was sent not just anywhere, but to Paris, to design the Soviet section of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Art Industry. Rodchenko will stay in Paris for several months, bringing back a lot of starched collars, six pairs of stockings for his wife, a lot of equipment for work and the concept of "comrade-thing".

In the early 1930s, Rodchenko created a photo group in the legendary Oktyabr creative association. His "calling card" was the so-called "perspective shots" taken from an unusual, most often unique point.

The post-war years turned into one endless nightmare for Rodchenko. There are only black entries in the diary.

"Great experimenter", as defined by the collector G.D. Kostaki. Continuing the search in the field of cubo-futuristic and non-objective painting, highly appreciating K.S. Malevich and V.E. Tatlin (in his youth he considered him his teacher), from 1917 to 1921 he created an original radical system of abstract art based on a geometric structure and minimal means of expression , became one of the authoritative masters of the 1920s.

Born in St. Petersburg in the building of the theater on Nevsky Prospekt, where his father worked as a props. From an early age, he dreamed of creating incredible costumes and performances from light, color, and air. After the family moved to Kazan, he studied as a dental technician, but chose the path of an artist. At the Kazan Art School (1911-1914) he was a volunteer, worked part-time with lessons and design work for Kazan University. Among teachers, he especially appreciated N.I. Feshin. Favorite artists: Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Aubrey Beardsley. He liked the purity of the lines in the Japanese prints of Utamaro and Hokusai. He was interested in literature, wrote poetry, illustrated Wilde's plays for himself, loved the poetry of Baudelaire and the Russian Silver Age poets Bryusov and Balmont. In Kazan, he met his future wife, artist V.F. Stepanova.

A.M. Rodchenko. Non-objective composition No. 65.1918. Canvas, oil. 90×62. PGKG

A.M. Rodchenko. Composition. 1919. Oil on canvas. 160×125. EMII

A.M. Rodchenko. Lines on a green background #92. 1919. Oil on canvas. 73×46. KOCM

A.M. Rodchenko. Composition 66/86. Density and weight. 1918. 122.3×73. GTG

A.M. Rodchenko. Non-objective composition No. 61. 1918. Oil on canvas. 40.8×36.5. TulMII

Moved to Moscow in 1916, studied at the StsKhPU, began to exhibit as a painter (the exhibition "Shop", 1916). Rodchenko joined the search for Russian avant-garde artists in the late 1910s, but did not repeat what had already been discovered, believing that each creator is valuable in his own original creative experience.

He welcomed the social upheavals of 1917 and actively advocated freedom of creativity. Participated in the creation of the Professional Union of Painters of Moscow (1918), became the secretary of the Young (left) federation (chairman - Tatlin) of the trade union. He agitated for a respectful attitude to innovation, in articles and appeals published in 1918 in the "Creativity" section of the newspaper "Anarchy", called on artists to be bold and uncompromising in their search. He worked in the Fine Arts Department of the NKP in the sub-department of the art industry, and later, in 1919-1921, he was in charge of the Museum Bureau of the NKP. In 1920–1924 he was a member of Inkhuk, participated in the discussions of the objective analysis group on construction and composition, and in the creation of the constructivist group. He supported the democratic orientation of constructivism and industrial art. The well-known project of the "Workers' Club", presented by him at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1925, is a dream of a conveniently and rationally organized life. His motto of the 1920s: "Life, conscious and organized, able to see and construct, is contemporary art."

Rodchenko's art, beginning with the linear-circular graphic compositions of 1915, developed in the spirit of geometric abstraction. In 1916 he worked on a series of cubo-futuristic compositions. In 1917-1918 he explored the methods of pictorial representation of interpenetrating planes and space, showing examples of his work at the 5th State Exhibition (1918, Moscow). In 1918 he made a cycle of compositions from round luminous forms "Color Concentration". 1919 - the beginning of the use of the line as an intrinsically valuable form in art. He fixed his creative credo in the manifesto texts “Everything is an experiment” and “Line” (1920). He treated art as the invention of new forms and possibilities, considered his work as a huge experiment in which any pictorial thing is limited in expressive means.

Each work by Rodchenko is a minimum compositional experience in terms of the type of material used. He builds a composition on the dominant color, distributing it over the surface of the plane with transitions. He sets himself the task of making a work where texture is the main form-building element, filling some parts of the picture painted only with black paint, filling others with matte (works "Black on Black", 1919, based on textured processing, are shown on the 10th state exhibition "Non-Objective Creativity and Suprematism" (1919. Moscow). The combination of shiny and differently processed surfaces gives rise to a new expressive effect. The border of textures is perceived as the border of form. Rodchenko made compositions from the same points, lines, giving these elements a philosophical ambiguity, approving line as a symbol of construction (19th state exhibition, 1920, Moscow).

Finally, in 1921, Rodchenko completed his painting system with three evenly colored canvases: red, yellow and blue (triptych "Smooth Color". Exhibition "5 × 5 = 25". 1921. Moscow). In the prospectus for his automonography in 1922, he writes: “I consider the passed stage in art to be important for bringing art to the path of an initiative industry, a path that the new generation will not have to go through.” This was the beginning of the transition to "production art".

Rodchenko's experience convinced that there are universal compositional schemes (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, cruciform construction, zigzag, angle, circle, and so on). Emphasizing compositional schemes, revealing the geometric principles of composition construction will later be the essence of his photographic experiments with foreshortening.

In addition to painting and graphics, Rodchenko was engaged in spatial constructions. He created three cycles of works, in which he introduced the principle of structure and regular geometric construction. The first cycle - "Folding and Dismantling" - from flat cardboard elements, connected by insets (1918). The second - "Planes reflecting light", - freely hanging mobiles - carved from plywood concentric shapes (circle, square, ellipse, triangle and hexagon) (1920-1921). The third one is “According to the principle of identical forms” – spatial structures from standard wooden bars, connected according to the combinatorial principle (1920–1921).

Rodchenko's constructions, his structural-geometric linear discoveries influenced the formation of a characteristic constructivist style in book and magazine graphics, posters, object design, and architecture. If Tatlin pointed out the direction of constructivism with his Monument to the Third International, then Rodchenko gave a method based on structural-geometric linear shaping and combinatorics.

In 1919–1920, he participated in the work of Zhivskulptarkh (the commission of the Art Department of the NKP was created by N.A. Ladovsky, with the participation of architects V.F. Krinsky and G.M. Mapu, sculptor B.D. Korolev, painters Rodchenko and A.V. Shevchenko ), fantasized about new architectural structures and types of buildings - kiosks, public buildings, high-rise buildings. He developed the concept of a “city with an upper facade”, as he believed that in the future, in connection with the development of aeronautics, they would admire the city not from below, not from street level, but from above, flying over the city or being on all kinds of observation platforms. The land must be freed for traffic and pedestrians, and on the roofs of buildings design expressive structures, passages, hanging blocks of buildings, which will make up this new “upper facade of the city”.

In 1920 he was a professor at the faculty of painting, from 1922 to 1930 he was a professor at the metalworking faculty of Vkhutemas-Vkhutein, where he actually founded one of the first national schools of design. He taught students to design multifunctional objects for public buildings and everyday life, achieving expressiveness of form by revealing the design, witty inventions of transforming structures.

Rodchenko collaborated with figures of the left avant-garde cinema: A. M. Gan, Dziga Vertov (credits for Kinopravda, 1922), S. M. Eisenstein (posters for the film Battleship Potemkin, 1925), L. V. Kuleshov (work set decorator and production designer in the film "Your Friend", 1927). Cinema attracted Rodchenko as a new technical art.

The first photomontages and collages of 1922 were published in the Kino-fot magazine. It was published by Gan, a director and architect, constructivist theorist, author of the first book on the goals of constructivism, the cover for which was made by Rodchenko. Gan attracted Rodchenko and Stepanova from the very first issue. He wrote about Rodchenko's titles to Vertov's Kinopravda (a series of newsreels), published Rodchenko's experimental spatial constructions and his architectural projects of the city of the future, and Stepanova's cartoons of Charlie Chaplin. The visual culture of the avant-garde in cinema, photography, architecture and design was unified. Rodchenko's 1927 book on cinema by I. G. Ehrenburg was called Materialization of Fantasy. These words can be considered the motto of the artist himself.

With his photographs, photo montages and graphic compositions, Rodchenko influenced directors and cameramen, created memorable film posters for Vertov's documentaries, Eisenstein's film epics, and advertisements for feature films directed by D.N. Bassalygo on revolutionary themes.

Rodchenko was the main artist of the Lef literary and artistic group, designed the books of B.I. Arvatov, V.V. Mayakovsky, N.N. (1927–1928). Together with Stepanova and Gan, he joined in the design of technical and popular science literature. In book graphics, designing advertising posters, leaflets, packaging, he adhered to several principles: subordinating the compositional solution to a graphic scheme and structural field (module), using a chopped drawn font, filling the sheet space with forms as much as possible, using graphic accents (arrows and exclamation marks). He introduced photomontage into the design of books (the first edition of the poem "About this", 1923), magazines and posters.

Together with Mayakovsky (text), he created more than a hundred advertising leaflets, posters, signboards for state enterprises, trusts, joint-stock companies: Dobrolyot, Rezinotrest, Gosizdat, GUM, having developed a unique program for each of the organizations that determined its graphic originality. Brightness, posterity, some brutality of advertising in the first half of the 1920s is characteristic of early constructivism.

In 1925, Rodchenko traveled to Paris to attend the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Art Industry, where his interior project for the Workers' Club was presented in the Soviet section. The space of the club was solved in a complex way, with the allocation of separate functional areas (tribune and screen, library, reading room, entrance and information corner, Lenin corner, chess playing area with a specially designed chess table), in a single color scheme (red, white, gray , black, in the same colors, at the suggestion of Rodchenko, the pavilion of K.S. Melnikov was also painted).

Rodchenko has been engaged in photography since 1924. His psychological portraits of relatives are known (“Portrait of a Mother”, 1924), friends and acquaintances from Lef (portraits of Mayakovsky, L.Yu. and O.M. Brik, Aseev, Tretyakov), artists and architects (A .A. Vesnina, Ghana, L.S. Popova). In 1926 he published his first foreshortened photographs of buildings (series "House on Myasnitskaya", 1925 and "House of Mosselprom", 1926) in the magazine "Soviet Cinema". In the articles “The Ways of Modern Photography”, “Against the Summarized Portrait for a Snapshot” and “Great Illiteracy or Petty Muck”, he promoted a new, dynamic, documentary-accurate view of the world, defended the need to master the upper and lower points of view in photography. Participated in the exhibition "Soviet photography for 10 years" (1928. Moscow).

He led the page "Photo in Cinema" in the magazine "Soviet Cinema", published articles on modern photography in the magazine "New Lef". On the basis of the photo section of the creative association "October" in 1930 he created a photo group of the same name, which brought together the most avant-garde masters of Soviet photography: B.V. Ignatovich, E.M. Langman, V.T. Gryuntal, M.A. Kaufman. In 1932 he joined the Moscow Union of Artists as a book artist. But at the same time he worked in the presidium of the Union of Photographic Workers, was a member of the jury of photographic exhibitions sent in the 1930s by VOKS to Europe, America, and Asia.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was a photojournalist for the Evening Moscow newspaper, the magazines 30 Days, Give!, Pioneer, Ogonyok and Radio listener. At the same time he worked in the cinema (the artist of the films "Moscow in October", 1927, "Your Friend", 1927, "The Doll with Millions" and "Albidum", 1928) and the theater (productions of "Inga" and "Klop", 1929). His scenography was distinguished by laconicism and purity. Furniture and costumes in the spirit of late constructivism can be considered as rational models for production. Dynamics and transformation were present even in clothing models.

In 1931, at the exhibition of the Oktyabr group in Moscow at the Press House, he exhibited a number of discussion photographs - taken from the bottom point of Pioneer and Pioneer Trumpeter, 1930; a series of dynamic shots “Vakhtan Sawmill”, 1931, which became the object of devastating criticism and accusations of Rodchenko in formalism and unwillingness to reorganize in accordance with the tasks of proletarian photography.

In 1932 he left the "October" and began working as a photojournalist in Moscow "Izogiz". In 1933 - graphic designer of the magazine "USSR at a Construction Site", photo albums "10 Years of Uzbekistan", "First Cavalry", "Red Army", "Soviet Aviation" and others (together with Stepanova). He was a member of the jury and designer of many photo exhibitions, was a member of the presidium of the photo section of the Trade Union of Film and Photo Workers. In 1941, together with his family, he was evacuated to the Urals (Ocher, Perm). In 1944 he worked as the chief artist of the House of Technology. In the late 1940s, together with Stepanova, he designed photo albums: “The Cinematography of Our Motherland”, “Kazakhstan”, “Moscow”, “Moscow Metro”, “300th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia”. In 1952 he was expelled from the MOSH, restored in 1955.

He died of a stroke and was buried at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.

Rodchenko's works are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts, the State Museum of Fine Arts, the Moscow House of Photography, MoMA, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and other collections.