Intreeged by the leaflet of the Visionary Structures. From Johansons to Johansons exhibition in Bozar, I headed to Brussels.
The exhibition showcase works by seven Latvian artists active between 1920 and 2014 – Karl Iognason, Gustavs Klucis, Valdis Celms, Jānis Krievs, Artūrs Riņķis, Gints Gabrāns and Voldemārs Johansons. Despite the fact that each of these artists belongs to a different age and another ideological era, there is a coherence between their works. All these pieces of art, design, architecture and urban planning were influenced by constructivism and futuristic ideas.
The graphics works, mainly photomontages, by Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938) attracted my attention the most. I knew very little about him except that he was a student and then a teacher at VKhuTEMAS, about his ideological beliefs and his work for Kino-front magazine (1926).
'Stand with Rotating Slogan’, Henri Milner, wood, acrylic, 2013. Courtesy GRAD: Gallery for Russian Arts and Design
In the dark rooms in Bozar, alongside with red & black dynamic compositions with angled viewpoints and weird perspective, there were a few works with absolutely different stylistic. Like, for instance, a few compositions with two-dimensional, spatial structures, which visually created a three-dimensional volume and space as if they were spinning around. These ideas were later adopted by a model maker and artist Henri Milner, who (re)created one of the Klucis' drawings as a sculpture in 2013.
Klucis, one of the founders of the art of photomontage, spent all his talent to create powerful tools for political campaigning. However, because of the paradoxes in Russian history of the twentieth century, the artist was destroyed by the system itself, to promote which he worked for. Luckily he hasn't been forgotten as his wife and fellow designer Valentina Kulagina (1902-1987) did everything to preserve the heritage of G.Klucis. His works are currently on display in The Latvian National Museum of Art, Mayakovsky Museum, Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and in MoMa.
you might also like
'Visionary Structures' by curator Ieva Astahovska - video (English spoken)
Documentary about Gustav Klucis (Russian spoken).
Аксонометрическая живопись. 1920 г. художника Густава Клуциса - эфир
GRAD Gallery for Russian Art & Design, London
The Charnel-House - blog
Letterpress in Russia - Pinterest