The designer Sobolev contributed this early "sofabed" meant for
use in the relatively cramped apartments of the new Soviet state.
Sleek, multi-use designs of this sort played a central role in the constructivist
sets that Meyerhold and Tairov would use so successfully in the early 1920s.
Varvara Stepanova (1894-1954) was the wife of Alexander Rodchenko, and
a major constructivist artist and
designer in her own right. In this 1923 photograph she poses in sports
clothes of her own design. Such
clothes were meant to fit in with the general ethos to create simple
and functional, yet aesthetically pleasing quotidian
objects for the general public. Unfortunately, most of these projects
never made it off the drawing board into mass
production, either for technical, economic, or political reasons.
In this 1925 photograph, Alexander Rodchenko poses in a suit of
worker's clothes of his own design. Even Malevich got into the design act.
This photograph depicts two teacups painted with suprematist designs. The
actual execution of the painting was by two of Malevich's students Ilia
Chashnik and Nikolai Suetin. Although the cups are definitely striking,
their utility is somewhat questionable, and it is unlikely that the designs
would have been to the liking of the average Soviet coal-miner. Perhaps
not surprisingly, such china was never mass produced.
This photograph shows Malevich at the "Experimental laboratory" at the
State Russian Museum in Leningrad sometime in the 1930s. He is working
on one of his "architectons" -- three-dimensional spatial models vaguely
reminiscent of architectural projects, although none was ever built.
While the best-known lines of Russian avant-garde artistic development
passed through Malevich and Tatlin,
Pavel Filonov (1883-1941) worked slowly and painstakingly to develop
a highly personal style. Although he
started his career in the Futurist camp (and contributed to the design
of Mayakovsky's "Vladimir Mayakovsky. A
Tragedy" in 1913. Like most of the Futurists, Filonov welcomed the
Bolshevik coup. Throughout the 1920s, Filonov
developed a school of what he called "analytical art" which he practiced
and taught to a devoted band of followers.
His paintings, like this "Head" (1925) are distinguished by great delicacy
and minute brushwork. Every inch of the
painted surface is filled with an abundance of detail which flows together
to create the whole. Filonov was fascinated
by the grotesque, by the art of children and the insane.