Visions of a New World: Rodchenko and Stepanova

3rd February 2015

To coincide with The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art’s exhibition, At Home with Rodchenko and Stepanova (in Moscow until 8th March), and the V&A Museum’s Russian Avant Garde Theatre exhibition (in London until 15th March), here is a short introduction on these notable Russian artists with links to some of the books and magazines featuring their work that we currently have in stock:

Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) and Varvara Stepanova (1894-1958) met at the Kazan Art School in 1910 and later married. Rodchenko, who focused on photomontage in the 1920s, was one of the founders of Russian Constructivism. This was a form of modern art built on the foundations of Cubism and Futurism that aimed to encompass all aspects of everyday life from art and design to film and fashion, influencing later movements such as Bauhaus and Dadaism. Stepanova developed the ideals of this art form to concentrate on costume and set designs for theatre and working clothes for industry and sports.

Click on the images below for more information:

  Machinery and Life (1925) featuring Stepanova on the front cover with cover designs by Gan and Rodchenko, who regularly contributed photographic and typographic designs, including:

  “We had visions of a new world, industry, technology and science. We simultaneously invented and changed the world around us. We authored new notions of beauty and redefined art itself.” [Rodchenko]

L’Art Decoratif URSS (1925) book cover design by Rodchenko

30 Days (1929) photo by Rodchenko / see also work by Rodchenko and Stepanova (and others, such as Klutsis, Ganf and El Lissitsky) in:

  and in USSR in Construction (1932):

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