Rise of Constructivism

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement that arose in Russia in the 1910s, with early roots in the abstract reliefs made from industrial materials by Vladimir Tatlin around 1913. After the 1917 revolution it was taken up by artists such as Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky and Varvara Stepanova, who believed that art should serve society and be made with the methods of industry rather than for galleries. They designed posters, books, textiles, furniture and buildings, and Tatlin's unbuilt Monument to the Third International became its best-known project. By the 1930s Stalin's government favoured socialist realism and the movement was suppressed in the Soviet Union, but its ideas strongly influenced the Bauhaus and later graphic design and architecture.

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