Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko 1891-1956

bidding is closed

Description

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko
'mayakovsky with scottie'

warm-toned, on textured paper, the photographer's 'Photo Rodchenko' credit stamp (translated) and titled and dated in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, matted, framed, 1924

Provenance

Acquired by the present owner from the Rodchenko family through Howard Schickler Fine Art, New York, 1996

Literature

Another print of this image:

Alexander Lavrentiev, Alexander Rodchenko: Photography, 1924-1954 (New Jersey, 1996), p. 137

Catalogue Note

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930), one of Rodchenko's most familiar subjects, was a leading Russian poet and activist of his time. Mayakovsky was associated with the Futurist movement and Levyi front iskusstv (Left Front of the Arts), an organization that produced the magazines Lef (Left, 1923-25) and Novyi Lef (New Left, 1927-28). Both Lef and Novyi Lef featured cover art and designs by Rodchenko. Mayakovsky and Rodchenko joined forces in the early 1920s to produce advertising campaigns for state economic enterprises, Rodchenko creating the designs and Mayakovsky the slogans.

In 1924, Rodchenko made a series of six posed portraits of Mayakovsky, with the intention to use them in future collaborative efforts. The photograph offered here was taken in the garden of the house Gendrikov Arcade, in Moscow, where Mayakovsky lived for a number of years, and where The State Museum of Vladimir Mayakovsky now stands.