Constructivism

Constructivism, a Russian artistic and architectural movement that was first influenced by Cubism
and Futurism, is generally considered to have been initiated in 1913 with the "painting reliefs", abstract
geometric constructions of Vladimir Tatlin. The expatriate Russian sculptors Antoine Pevsner and
Naum Gabo joined Tatlin and his followers in Moscow, and upon publication of their jointly written
Realist Manifesto in 1920 they became the spokesmen of the movement. It is from the manifesto that
the name 'Constructivism' was derived; one of the directives and technology, functionalism, and
modern industrial materials such as plastic, that it contained was "to construct" art. Because of their
admiration for machines steel, and glass, members of the movement were also called artist-engineers.

Other important figures associated with Constructivism were Alexander Rodchenko and El
Lissitzky. Soviet opposition to the Constructivists' aesthetic radicalism resulted in the group's
dispersion. Tatlin and Rodchenko remained in the Soviet Union, but Gabo and Pevsner went first to
Germany and then to Paris, where they influenced the Abstraction-Création group with Constructivist
theory, and later in the 1930s Gabo spread Constructivism to England and in the 1940s to the United
States. Lissitzky's combination of Constructivism and Suprematism influenced the de Stijl artists and
architects whom he met in Berlin, as well as the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, who was a professor
at the Bauhaus. In both Dessau and Chicago, where (because of Nazi interference) the New Bauhaus
was established in 1937, Moholy-Nagy disseminated Constructivist principles. Vladimir Tatlin and
some of his colleagues, such as Lev Bruni, Ivan Kliun, and AIvan Puni, influenced by Pablo Picasso's
Cubist sculptures, began to make abstract nonutilitarian constructions in Russia in the years just before
the 1917 revolution.

Constructionist Impression and Style

Constructivism developed side by side with Suprematism, the two major modern art forms to
come out of Russia in the 20th century. But unlike Suprematism, whose concerns with form and
abstraction often seem tinged with mysticism, grew out of World War I and the October Revolution of
1917. Constructivism firmly embraced the new social and cultural developments that use of 'real
materials in real space'; the movement sought to use art as a tool for the common good, much in line
with the Communist principles of the new Russian regime. Many of the Russian Constructivist works
from this period involve projects in architecture, interior and fashion design, ceramics, typography and
graphics.

Many of the pioneers in Constructivism had also studied Suprematist ideas, but they increasingly
experimented with the three-dimensional designs. They also began to attack traditional forms of art,
which it was thought Constructivism could supplant: painting was officially declared "dead" at the
'5x5=25' exhibition, where Aleksandra Ekster, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara
Stepanova, and Alexander Vesnin each presented five works. Paintings were included, but Popova
declared that they should only be considered as designs for eventual constructions. Rodchenko's Black
on Black series of paintings, however, made a statement. Directly confronting Malevich's White on
White, which was meant to be the ultimate representation of a new reality, Rodchenko's black paintings
announced the end of an era - "Representation is finished; it is time to construct."

The international character of the movement was proven by the various origins of its artists.
Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, and El Lissitzky brought Constructivism the Soviet Union to the West.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy came to Germany from hungary, Theo van Doesburg from the Netherlands. Ben
Nicholson was the most prominent english contructivist. Josef Albers and Hans Richter encountered
movement in their native Germany but were also instrumental in its international from dissemination.

Constructivist art is marked by a commitment to total abstraction and a wholehearted acceptance

of modernity. rarely 'emotional. Often very geometric, it is usually experimental, rarely emotional.
Objective forms which were thought to have universal meaning were preferred over the subjective or
the individual. The art is often very reductive as well, paring the artwork down to its basic elements.
New media were often used. Again, the context is crucial: the Constructivists sought an art of order,
which would reject the past (the old order which had culminated in World War I) and lead to a world of
more understanding, unity, and peace. This utopian undercurrent is often missing from more recent
abstract art that might be otherwise tied to Constructivism.

De Stijl Art
De Stijl, a Dutch word meaning "The Style" is a group of Dutch artists in Amsterdam in 1917,
including the painters Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and Vilmos Huszár, the architect Jacobus
Johannes Pieter Oud, and the poet A. Kok; other early associates of De Stijl were Bart van der Leck,
Georges Vantongerloo, Jan Wils, and Robert van't Hoff. Its members, working in an abstract style,
were seeking laws of equilibrium and harmony applicable both to art and to life.

As a movement, De Stijl influenced painting, decorative arts (including furniture design),

typography, and architecture, but it was principally architecture that realized both De Stijl's stylistic
aims and its goal of close collaboration among the arts. The Worker's Housing Estate in Hoek van
Holland (1924-27), designed by Oud, expresses the same clarity, austerity, and order found in a
Mondrian painting. Gerrit Rietveld, another architect associated with De Stijl, also applied its stylistic
principles in his work; the Schröder House in Utrecht (1924), for example, resembles a Mondrian
painting in the severe purity of its facade and in its interior plan. Beyond the Netherlands, the De Stijl
aesthetic found expression at the Bauhaus in Germany during the 1920s and in the International Style
(Encyclopedia Britannica).

The harmony and order were established through a reduction of elements to pure geometric forms
and primary colors. Die Stijl was also the name of a publication discussing the groups theories which
was published by van Doesburg. The publication Die Stijl represents the most significant work of
graphic design from the movement, but the ideas of reduction of form and color are major influences
on the development of graphic design as well.

The artists and architects associated with De Stijl - painters such as Mondrian, van Doesburg and
Ilya Bolotowsky, and architects such as Gerrit Rietveld and J. J.

P. Oud-adopted what they perceived to be a purer form of geometry, consisting of forms made up of
straight lines and basic geometric shapes (largely rendered in the three primary colors); these motifs
provided the fundamental elements between of compositions that avoided symmetry and strove for
balanced relationship between surfaces and the distribution of colors. In Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial
Art, Mondrian explained: "As a pure representation of the human mind, art will express itself in an
aesthetically purified, that is to say, abstract form. The new plastic idea cannot, therefore, take the form
of a natural or concrete representation."

In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931
founded in the Netherlands (Curl, 2006). Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and
universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and color, they simplified visual compositions to
vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors.

The passing of Theo von Doesburg facilitated the death of the movement. Individual members
remained in contact, but De Stijl could not exust without a strong central character. Thus, it mat be
wrong to think of De Stijl as a close-knit group of artists. The members knew each other, but most
communication took place by letter. For example, Mondrian and Rietveld never met in person.