Russia and Constructivism

Vladimir Lenin was the first head of Soviet Russia after the October revolution. Lenin believed Russian culture was at the heart of a strong nation. From 1919 to 1929 artists in Russia received relative freedom to experiment with art in order to conceive a distinct Soviet style. Lenin wanted art to be ‘accessible’ to the proletariat.
Productivism and Constructivism were new forms and ideas in visual art in post revolution Russia. Constructivism questioned the role of art in society. Working along side the principles of communism, the constructivists aimed to work as a collective. They believed in equality of the sexes making it one of the first times female artists were valued as highly as men. They took a scientific and very rational approach to art, wanting to contribute to every day life through design, architecture etc. (similar Bauhaus principles – see post).
Alexander Rodchenko and Liubov Popova were two of the founders of the constructivism movement. They worked across a number of fields including graphic design, advertising and theatre. Rodchenko was a very experimental artist. Much of his work is abstract, he experimented widely with texture, surface and colour. His experimentation with colour lead to a series of works which eliminated colour and focused solely on the textures and surface used.

Alexander RodchenkoBlack on Black from the series 'Black on Black' 1918

References
Russian formalism By Victor Erlich
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/lenin_vladimir.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletkult
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/rodchenkopopova/

The Bauhaus (in brief!)

The founder of the Bauhaus (1919-1933) was an architect named Walter Gropius. At the time Germany was experiencing cultural and political upheaval; despite the Bauhaus revolutionary approach to teaching art Gropius maintained that the Bauhaus was unpolitical.
The ideals of form following function were part of the distinctive Bauhaus style. Modernism was a huge influence on the approach of designs. Gropius wanted to reunite craft with art thus creating highly functional beautiful consumer goods that could be easily mass produced. The unique Bauhaus style was also influenced by De Stijl. Johannes Itten taught at the Bauhaus; he developed the course which students would begin at their start of their studies its emphasis being on unusual uses of common materials. Itten eventually left the Bauhaus due to disputes with Gropius over teaching methods (use of meditation and eastern mysticism). Itten's departure marked a turning point in the whole ethos in teaching at the Bauhaus, Gropius wanted to further the ideas he favoured of Russian Constructivism. Itten was succeeded by Moholy-Nagy. For the showcase of the schools new ideas a house was designed, built and furnished as a model modern home. A new location for the school was founded in Dessau, 1925. The Bauhaus was fulfilling the ideals Gropius had intended and the school enjoyed a few years of success. But, with Nazism in the ascent, political pressure mounted, and in 1928 Gropius left. His successors, Hannes Meyer and Mies, spent their leaderships hindered and caught up in political friction.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=40
http://www.designicons.co.uk/
Bauhaus Dessau: Walter Gropius - Dennis Sharp

Ed Fella

Ed Fella has worked across a number of fields within the art world. He begun his career working in the commercial world of advertising but now works in education. His work in graphic design and typography is unique and very distinctive; he is an established and impressive post modern artist. Fella’s work has embraced the postmodern concepts of deconstruction, he mixes high and low culture trends throughout his work.A lot of his works are cluttered pieces of typographic design that mix hand written fonts of different sizes and layouts, colours and shapes together, I think they are like perfected doodles.

Ed Fella’s personal approach to typography is bold and daring, his work has featured in Raygun magazine and it definitely falls into the same genre of artists that worked on their covers; very experimental and unconventional. Half of issue 17 of Émigré magazine is devoted to Ed Fella. His font designs are still featured by them. He blurs the divide between graphic design and art; this is certainly evident in his collages that are beautifully composed pieces of typography and art.

References

http://www.emigre.com/Bios.php?d=15

http://www.edfella.com/

Ed Fella: Letters on America - Lewis Blackwell