Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko 1891-1956

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Description

Alexander Mikhailovich Rodchenko
'at the lenin library'

ferrotyped, the photographer's 'Foto Rodchenko' credit stamp (translated) and titled, dated, and credited to the photographer in an unidentified hand in pencil on the reverse, matted, framed, 1929

Provenance

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

Literature

A variant of this image:

Margarita Tupitsyn, Aleksandr Rodchenko: The New Moscow (Schirmer/Mosel and Sprengel Museum Hannover, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition), pl. 65

Catalogue Note

In 1932, Rodchenko was asked to contribute his work to the proposed book Two Moscows. At this time, Joseph Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan for a ‘new’ Moscow was coming to a close. This plan focused on establishing an independent socialist state by creating self-sufficient industry and agriculture. Sponsored by Izogiz (State Publishing House of Fine Arts), Two Moscows was designed to illustrate the plan’s progress in Moscow, and was to include photographs by Rodchenko, of the new Moscow, and illustrations by well-known artists, caricaturing the old Moscow. The book was never published. A variant of Rodchenko’s photograph of the Lenin Library, highlighting the literacy rate in the new state, was included in the layout for The New Moscow section of Two Moscows (cf. Tupitsyn, Aleksandr Rodchenko: The New Moscow, pp. 14-18).