Architecture and Avant-Garde

Revision

Introduction

• During the 20th century some avant-garde movements had their expression in architecture.

• In general, these styles are influenced by the Bauhaus, and they are contemporary of it.

• These avant-garde architectonical experienced are linked to– De Stijl or Neoplasticism (Netherlands)– Russian Constructivism.

De Stijl

• Associated with three important figures: – the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van

Doesburg, and – the architect and furniture-maker Gerrit Rietveld

• De Stijl (or “the style”) was perhaps first developed in Mondrian’s post-Cubist paintings, which consist largely of broken horizontal and vertical lines.

• These works evolved into more spare geometric compositions of orthogonal elements, which are rendered in primary colors set against a white field.

De Stijl

• In 1917, Rietveld created the canonical “Red/Blue Chair” and projected the Neo-Plastic aesthetic into three dimensions.

• Van Doesburg taught, for a time, at the Bauhaus, enabling him to widen the De Stijl circle to artists as the Russian El Lissitzky under whose influence, Van Doesberg began “to project, as axonometric drawings, a series of hypothetical architectural constructs

• These buildings comprise an asymmetrical cluster of articulated planar elements suspended in space about a volumetric center.”

De Stijl architecture: Characteristics

• The characteristics of this architecture were established by van Doesburg: – the form does not imitate any other style; – especial attention is given to plastic elements, in

addition to function, mass, surface, time, space, light, colour and material;

– it is an economic and functional architecture; – it does not have any form following fixed styles

and the building is not monumental, but a form open to the space through windows;

– the ground-plan is essential but in this the walls are not closed even if they support punctually the building;

De Stijl architecture: Characteristics

– it is an open architecture in which space and time are considered;

– it is anti-cubic and surfaces follow a centrifugal trend at the same time that symmetry and repetition are eliminated;

– there is not a clear front in the building and colour is included as a plastic value but, in general, it is a non decorate architecture that aims to be a synthesis of the Neo-Plasticism

– It uses the same primary colours that appear in Mondrian’s paintings

De Stijl

• The universalizing tendency of the De Stijl soon gave way to the broader, more objective concerns of the Modern movement.

• The project of De Stijl became, through necessity and evolution, a broader trajectory dedicated to social concerns and conditions.

• The desire to create architecture for the people through means of production, rather than an architecture simply guided by aesthetic concerns, became a rallying cry of a broader European Modernism.

Russian Constructivism

• Russian Constructivism was a movement that was active from 1913 to the 1940s.

• It was created by the Russian avant-garde, but quickly spread to the rest of the continent.

• Constructivist art is committed to complete abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely emotional.

• Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far more suitable to the movement than subjective or individualistic forms.

Russian Constructivism

• Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements.

• New media was often used in the creation of works, which helped to create a style of art that was orderly.

• An art of order was desirable at the time because it was just after WWI that the movement arose, which suggested a need for understanding, unity and peace.

Russian Constructivism

• Famous artists of the Constructivist movement include Vladimir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky.

• Tatlin's most famous piece remains his "Monument to the Third International" (1919-20, Moscow), a 22-ft-high (6.7-m) iron frame on which rested a revolving cylinder, cube, and cone, all made of glass which was originally designed for massive scale.

Russian Constructivism

• After the 1917 Revolution, Tatlin (considered the father of Russian Constructivism) worked for the new Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists and art to educate the public.

• During this period, he developed an officially authorized art form which utilized 'real materials in real space'.

• His project for a Monument of the Third International marked his first foray into architecture and became a symbol for Russian avant-garde architecture and International Modernism.

Tatlin:

Third International Monument

Melnikov:

Russian pavillion fot the 1925 Paris Universal Exhibition

Pravda, Mosku

El Lisstzisky

Melnikov