rodchenko - a background

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was born on 5th December 1891, in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was an artist, graphic designer, photographer and sculptor. He was one of the founders of Constructivism art and was also part of the Productivist art group.

His photography work was unique in itself, as he usually shot his works in very high or low angles, his reasoning fro this was that “one has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.”



In 1921 Rodchenko produced the first monochrome pictures of red, blue and yellow. He claimed that this was the end of painting.



He became part of the Productivist group in 1921, where started producing graphics designs for movies, posters and books. He also started photomontaging, after being inspired by the German Dadaists, and released his first piece in 1923.




He worked closely with Mayakovsky, his first photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky’s poem “About This”, they also worked together to design the Constructivists journal LEF.



Rodchenko’s work has influenced a number of images to this day. Most notably the Dutch punk band ‘The Ex’ whose vinyl covers for their album ‘Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek/She Said’ imitating Rodchenko’s portrait of Lilya Brik. Similarly Franz Ferdinand’s album ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’ imitates the same image.
Another album cover from Franz Ferdinand resembles one of Rodchenko’s images. The cover for the single ‘Take Me Out’ is influenced by Rodchenko’s poster ‘One-Sixth Part of the World’.