Collection: Constructivism

Constructivism took shape in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 and ran until the imposition of Socialist Realism in 1932. The First Working Group of Constructivists was formed at INKhUK in Moscow in 1921 with Alexei Gan, Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956), Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), and the Stenberg brothers as founding members. The programme rejected easel painting in favour of art that served industrial production and the construction of socialist society. Naum Gabo (1890–1977) and Antoine Pevsner (1886–1962) had already published the Realistic Manifesto in Moscow in August 1920, fixing the movement's theoretical vocabulary.

Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International of 1919–20, never built but disseminated through models and photographs, became the movement's signature unrealised project. Rodchenko developed photomontage, typographic poster, and book design into the period's most influential graphic forms, working closely with Stepanova. El Lissitzky (1890–1941) turned the printed page into constructed space through his Proun series and his 1923 children's book About 2 Squares. Lyubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster, the Vesnin brothers, and Gustav Klutsis applied the same vocabulary to theatre, textiles, and propaganda. The VKhUTEMAS school in Moscow served as the movement's institutional home from 1920 to 1930.