Vladimir Tatlin
Encyclopedia
Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin ( – May 31, 1953) was a Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 and Soviet painter and architect. With Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...

 he was one of the two most important figures in the Russian avant-garde
Russian avant-garde
The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960...

 art movement of the 1920s, and he later became the most important artist in the Constructivist
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

 movement. He is most famous for his attempts to create the giant tower, The Monument to the Third International.

Biography

Tatlin was born in Kharkiv
Kharkiv
Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, the son of a railway engineer and a poet. He worked as a merchant sea cadet and spent some time abroad. He began his art career as an icon painter in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, and attended the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture was one of the largest educational institutions in Russia. The school was formed by the 1865 merger of a private art college, established in Moscow in 1832, and the Palace School of Architecture, established in 1749 by Dmitry Ukhtomsky. By...

. He was also a professional musician-bandurist
Bandurist
A bandurist is a person who plays the Ukrainian plucked string instrument known as the bandura.-Types of performers:There are a number of different types of bandurist who differ in their paricular choice of instrument, the specific repertoire they play and manner in which they approach their...

, and performed as such at the Paris World Fair in 1906.

Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed the huge Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin's Tower
Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental building envisioned by the Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, but never built. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd Tatlin’s Tower or The Monument to the Third International is a grand monumental...

. Planned in 1920, the monument, was to be a tall tower in iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...

 in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 (the Monument to the Third International was a third taller at 1,300 feet high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). High prices prevented Tatlin from executing the plan, and no building such as this was erected in his day.

Tatlin was also regarded as a progenitor of Russian post-Revolutionary Constructivist art
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...

 with his pre-Revolutionary counter-reliefs — structures made of wood and iron for hanging in wall corners. He conceived these sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

s in order to question the traditional idea of painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, though he did not regard himself as a Constructivist and objected to many of the movement's ideas. Later prominent constructivists included Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Stepanova
Varvara Fyodorovna Stepanova , was a Russian artist associated with the 'Constructivist' movement.She came from peasant origins but was fortunate enough to get an education at Kazan School of Art, Odessa. There she met her lifelong friend and collaborator Alexander Rodchenko...

, Alexander Rodchenko
Alexander Rodchenko
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova....

, Manuel Rendón Seminario
Manuel Rendón Seminario
Manuel Rendón Seminario was a master Latin American painter credited with bringing the Constructivist Movement to Ecuador and Latin America together with Joaquín Torres García who brought the Constructivist Movement to his home country of Uruguay...

, Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García , was a Uruguayan plastic artist and art theorist, also known as the founder of Constructive Universalism...

, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...

, Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner was a Belarusian and Russian sculptor and the older brother of Alexii Pevsner and Naum Gabo. Both Antoine and Naum are considered pioneers of twentieth-century sculpture.Pevsner was born in Klimavichy, Belarus...

 and Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo
Naum Gabo KBE, born Naum Neemia Pevsner was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic Art.-Early life:...

.

Although colleagues at the beginning of their careers, Tatlin and Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...

 quarrelled fiercely and publicly at the time of the 'Zero-Ten' (0.10) exhibition in 1915 (long before the birth of Constructivism), also called "the last futurist exhibition", apparently over the 'suprematist
Suprematism
Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms which formed in Russia in 1915-1916. It was not until later that suprematism received conventional museum preparations...

' works Malevich exhibited there. This led Malevich to develop his ideas further in the city of Vitebsk
Vitebsk
Vitebsk, also known as Viciebsk or Vitsyebsk , is a city in Belarus, near the border with Russia. The capital of the Vitebsk Oblast, in 2004 it had 342,381 inhabitants, making it the country's fourth largest city...

, where he found a school called UNOVIS
UNOVIS
UNOVIS was a short-lived but influential group of Russian artists, founded and led by Kazimir Malevich at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919....

 (Champions of the new art).

Tatlin also dedicated himself to the study of clothes, objects and so on. At the end of his life he started to research bird flight, in order to pursue one of the great dreams of humanity: to fly.

Tatlin was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery is the most famous cemetery in Moscow, Russia. It is next to the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, which is the city's third most popular tourist site. It should not be confused with the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg....

in Moscow.
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