Chapter 15

Question 1

Cubo-Futurism

Answer 1

The Russian avant-garde saw common traits in cubism and futurism and coined this term. Experimentation in typography and design characterized their futurists publications, which presented work by the visual and literary art communities.

Question 1

Suprematism

Answer 1

A painting style of basic forms and pure color founded by Kasimir Malevich. Rejecting both utilitarian function and pictorial representation, this nonobjective geometric abstraction was meant to express pure feeling through visual form

Question 1

Constructivists

Answer 1

A group of 25 artists led by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko, who renounced “art for art’s sake” to devote themselves to industrial design, visual communications, and applied arts serving the new communist society. This group called on artists to stop producing useless things such as paintings and turn to the poster for “such work now belongs to the duty of the artist as a citizen of the community who is clearing the field of the old rubbish in preparation for the new life.” The three principals of this group’s work were tectonics, texture, and construction.

Question 1

tectonics

Answer 1

The principal of constructivism that represented the unification of communist ideology with visual form

Question 1

texture

Answer 1

the principal of constructivism that dealt with the nature of materials and how they are used in industrial production

Question 1

construction

Answer 1

The principle of constructivism that symbolized the creative process and the search for laws of visual organization

Question 2

PROUNS

Answer 2

An acronym for “projects for the establishment [affirmation] of a new art,” coined by El Lissitzky to name his own painting style. He introduced three-dimensional illusions that both receded (negative depth) behind the picture plane (naught depth) and projected forward (positive depth) from the picture plane. Lissitzky called this “an interchange station between painting and architecture”

Question 3

Novyi lef

Answer 3

• Left front of the Arts
• A magazine for all fields of the creative arts designed by Alexander Rodchenko. Overprinting, precise registration, and photomontage were regularly employed

Question 4

Serial Painting

Answer 4

A series or sequence of independent works unified by common elements or an underlying structure

Question 5

infantilism

Answer 5

The fresh, spontaneous, naive techniques of children’s art seen in Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev’s work

Question 6

De Stijl

Answer 6

This movement sought universal laws of equilibrium and harmony for art, which could then be a prototype for a new social order. Its artists worked in an abstract, geometric style. Its founder and guiding spirit, Theo van Doesburg, was joined by painters Piet Mondrain, Bart Anthony van der Leck, and Vilmos Hiszar, the architect Jacob Johannes Peiter Qud, and others. With their proscribed visual vocabulary, these artists sought an expression of the mathematical structure of the universe and the universal harmony of nature. They believed the war was expunging an obsolete age, and science, technology, and political developments would usher in a new era of objectivity and collectivism.

Question 7

De stijl (journal)

Answer 7

Edited and published by Theo van Doesburg, this publication spread the De Stijl movement’s theory and philosophy to a larger audience. It advocated the absorption of pure art by applied art

Question 8

elementarism

Answer 8

Theo van Doesburg’s theory that declared the diagonal to be a more dynamic compositional principle than horizontal and vertical construction

Question 9

Mechano-faktura theory

Answer 9

Developed by Henryk Berlewi, it mechanized painting and graphic design into a constructed abstraction that abolished any illusion of three dimensions. This was accomplished by mathematical placement of simple geometric forms on a background. The mechanization of art was seen as an expression of industrial society

Question 10

Roklama Mechano

Answer 10

In 1924, Henryk Berlewi joined the furturist poets Aleksander Wat and Stanley Brucz in opening this Warsaw advertising firm. It introduced modern art forms to Polish society through industrial and commercial advertisements

Question 11

Devetsil

Answer 11

• Nine Forces
• A group of avant-garde poets, designers, architects, performance artists, and musicians who designed many of their publications using what was available in the letterpress printer’s type case

Question 12

Kasimir Malevich

Answer 12

• 1878-1935
• founded a painting style of basic forms and pure color that he called suprematism. He believed the essence of the art experience was the perceptual effect of color and form. He created a construction of concrete elements of color and shape. The visual form became the content, and expressive qualities developed from the intuitive organization of the forms and colors. He argued that art must remain an essentially spiritual activity, apart from the utilitarian needs of society

Question 13

Vladimir Tatlin

Answer 13

• 1885-1953
• led the constructivist movement along with Alexander Rodchenko, renouncing “art for art’s sake” to devote themselves to industrial design, visual communications, and applied arts serving the new communist society. Tatlin turned from sculpture to the design of a stove that would give maximum heat from minimum fuel.

Question 14

Alexander Rodchenko

Answer 14

• 1891-1956
• led the constructivist movement along with Vladimir Tatlin; they renounced “art for art’s sake” to devote themselves to industrial design, visual communications, and applied arts serving the new communist society. He forsook painting for graphic design and photojournalism. In 1923, he began to design a magazine for all fields of the creative arts, entitled Novyi lef (Left Front of the Arts). He developed the concept of serial painting.

Question 15

Aleksei Gan

Answer 15

• 1893-1942
• led an early attempt to formulate constructivist ideology in his 1922 brochure He criticized abstract painters for their inability to break the umbilical cord connecting them to traditional art and boasted that constructivism had moved from laboratory work to practical application. He wrote that tectonics, texture, and construction were the three principles of constructivism.

Question 16

El Lissitzky

Answer 16

• 1890-1941
• The constructivist ideal was best realized by this painter, architect, graphic designer, and photographer, an indefatigable visionary who profoundly influenced the course of graphic design. He developed a painting style that he called PROUNS, which introduced three-dimensional illusions that both receded (negative depth) behind the picture plane (naught depth) and projected forward (positive depth) from the picture plane. PROUNS connected the modern-painting concepts of form and space to applied design, which can be seen in his 1919 poster “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge.” Through his social responsibility and commitment to his people, his mastery of technology to serve his goals, and his creative vision, he set a standard of excellence for designers

Question 17

Salomon Telingater

Answer 17

A dash of Dadaist vitality was often mixed into the constructivist designs of his work. A witty originality informed his use of typography and montage elements

Question 18

Georgii and Vladinir Augustovich Stenberg

Answer 18

• 1900-33, 1899-1982
• talented brothers who collaborated on theatrical designs and film posters. They made meticulously realistic drawings for their posters by enlarging film-frame images via projection and grid methods

Question 19

Gustav Klutsis

Answer 19

• 1895-1944
• The master of propaganda photomontage, he referred to the medium as “the art construction for socialism.” He used the poster as a means for extolling Soviet accomplishments. His work has often been compared to John Heartfield’s powerful political statements

Question 20

Vladimir Vasilevich Lebedev

Answer 20

• 1891-1967
• embraced Bolshevism and designed bold, flat, neo-primitivist agitational propaganda posters for ROSTA, the Soviet telegraph agency. He learned to simplify, reducing forms to their basic geometric shapes and using only brilliant primary colors, and to tell a story visually and in sequence. He became the father of the twentieth-century Russian picture book

Question 21

Theo van Doesburg

Answer 21

founder and guiding spirit of the De Stijl movement. Like Piet Mondrian, he reduced his visual vocabulary to the use of primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), with neutrals (black, gray, and white), straight horizontal and vertical lines, and flat planes limited to rectangles and squares. He applied De Stijl principles to architecture, sculpture, and typography. He edited and published the journal De Stijl from 1917 until his death in 1931

Question 22

Piet Mondrian

Answer 22

• 1872-1944
• a painter who worked during the De Stijl movement. Like Théo van Doesburg, he reduced his visual vocabulary to the use of primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) with neutrals (black, gray, and white), straight horizontal and vertical lines, and flat planes limited to rectangles and squares. He stopped contributing articles to the De Stijl journal in 1924, after Van Doesburg developed his theory of elementarism

Question 23

Bart Anthony van der Leck

Answer 23

• 1876-1960
• a member of the De Stijl movement. Even before the movement formed, he had used flat, geometric shapes of pure color and created graphic designs with flat color images and simple black bars organizing the space

Question 24

Vilmos Huszar

Answer 24

• 1884-1960
• a member of the De Stijl movement. He designed a logo with letters constructed from an open grid of squares and rectangles and also some of the early title pages for the De Stijljournal

Question 25

Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud

Answer 25

• 1890-1963
• an architect who became a member of the De Stijl movement. In 1925, he designed the Café de Unie with an asymmetrical façade, projecting the De Stijl vision of order on an environmental scale

Question 26

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Answer 26

• 1895-1946
• De Stijl artist who turned to nonrepresentational painting influenced by Kasimir His design for Arthur Müller Lehning’s Amsterdam-based avant-garde publication i10—one of the purest examples of De Stijl principles applied to typography—demonstrates the collaboration of constructivism, De Stijl, and Merz

Question 27

Gerrit Rietveld

Answer 27

• 1888-1964
• architect who applied De Stijl theory to the design of the celebrated Schroeder House in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in 1924

Question 28

Henryk Berlewi

Answer 28

• 1894-1967
• a Polish designer who was decisively influenced by El Lissitzky’s 1920 Warsaw lectures. He worked in Germany, where he began to evolve his mechano-faktura

Question 29

Wladyslaw Strzeminski

Answer 29

• 1893-1952
• an avid proponent of constructivist page design in Poland. Having studied in Moscow and St. Petersburg, he had been involved with Russian constuctivism in its early stages. He worked with experimental typography in the 1920s (Fig. 15–62) and founded a modern typography school in Lodz, Poland, during the early 1930s.

Question 30

Ladislav Sutnar

Answer 30

• 1897-1976
• In Czechoslovakia, he became the leading supporter and practitioner of functional design. In addition to graphics, this prolific Prague designer created toys, furniture, silverware, dishes, and fabrics.

Question 31

Karel Teige

Answer 31

• 1900-51
• From Prague, he was initially trained as a painter but early in his career began working in typography and photomontage as an enthusiastic advocate of international modernism. He was an active participant in Devětsil, and believed that the untrained practitioner could contribute a fresh and innovative approach to design. From 1922 until 1938, he designed over one hundred books and periodicals. His constructivist approach involved an expressive use of type, montage, collage, and borrowed clips from silent films. He was the editor of several avant-garde magazines, including Disk, Zeme Sovetu, Stavba, and ReD (