Monday, 19 December 2011

Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935

Royal Academy of Arts

A small exhibition which includes constructionist paintings and drawings by Popova & Rodchecnko but they are over-shadowed by the photos of Richard Pare which make up at least half the exhibition. Pare spent 14 years looking for the most striking examples of constructivist architecture in Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan for his book 'Lost Vanguard: Russian Modernist Architecture 1922-1932. The photos are mostly from the 1990’s and draw the eye to them by the beauty of the photographs and their subject, the modernist buildings built in the years after the revolution. The Soviet State that emerged from the 1917 Russian Revolution needed new types of buildings: workers' clubs, schools, communal housing, sports facilities for the proletariat, factories and power stations to turn into reality the new socialist dreams of industrialisation, living quarters and offices for the new administration, working space for the secret police, etc.
The photos, however, also show the decay that has unfortunately befallen the buildings.
Richard Pare, Shábolovka's radio tower

Chekist Communal House
Dinamo Sports Club diving board

DneproGES: turbine room

Gosplan Garage, Moscow

Gosprom Building

 Konstantin Melnikov's house

Red Banner Textile Factory

Red Banner Textile Factory

 Water Tower for the Socialist City of Uralmash in Ekaterinburg, Russia

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